“Under this system [private property] the poor and the rich distrust, and make war upon, each other. But what is the object of the war? Property. So that property is necessarily accompanied by war upon property. The liberty and security of the rich do not suffer from the liberty and security of the poor; far from that, they mutually strengthen and sustain each other. The rich man’s right of property, on the contrary, has to be continually defended against the poor man’s desire for property. What a contradiction!” [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. What is Property. Benj. R. Tucker, translator. Princeton, Massachusetts: Benj. R. Tucker. 1876. Page 48.]

“To the true economist, society is a living being, endowed with an intelligence and an activity of its own, governed by special laws discoverable by observation alone, and whose existence is manifested, not under a material aspect, but by the close concert and mutual interdependence of all its members. Therefore, when a few pages back, adopting the allegorical method, we used a fabulous god as a symbol of society, our language in reality was not in the least metaphorical: we only gave a name to the social being, an organic and synthetic unit.” [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. System of Economical Contraditions: or, the Philosophy of Misery. Benj. R. Tucker, translator. Boston, Massachusetts: Benj. R. Tucker. 1888. Page 114.]

“But [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon’s post-mortem influence sprang in fact from a sociological strain in his thought which distinguished him sharply from [Max] Stirner. If we define Stirner as an egoistic individualist, we must regard Proudhon as a social individualist. To Stirner the individual is all, and society his enemy. To Proudhon the individual is both the starting point and the ultimate goal of our endeavors, but society provides the matrix – the serial order as he would call it – within which each man’s personality must find its function and fulfillment.” [George Woodcock. Anarchism : A History Of Libertarian Ideas And Movements. Cleveland, Ohio, and New York: Meridian Books imprint of The World Publishing Company. 1962. Page 106.]

“Associations of federated individual workers, ‘natural groups’ further united by coordinating bodies, as the basis of libertarian society, and industrial workers’ action as the way toward emancipation: these twin concepts, formulated not long before his death in 1865, were Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s heritage to what came to be called the syndicalist movement.” [Rainer Eisfeld, “The Emergence and Meaning of Socialist Pluralism.” International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique. Volume 17, number 3, July 1996. Pages 267-279.]

“[Karl] Marx attacked [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon as a ‘petty bourgeois anarchist,’ yet France was to remain fundamentally a country of petite bourgeois well into the 1940’s. Success for any movement meant incorporating this group. To ignore or condemn the petty bourgeoisie would only drive them into the hands of the monarchists or fascists. Proudhon’s anarchism appealed to the peasant, artisan and professional as well as the industrial worker. And as workers incomes increased, they too began to purchase property. Having once done so, they were most unwilling to relinquish their hard-earned gains to the sticky hands of the Socialist State. Proudhon the peasant had a much better grasp on reality than the bourgeois Marxists with all their abstract thoughts and dreams.” [Larry Gambone, “Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Anarchism: Proudhon’s Libertarian Thought and the Anarchist Movement.” Libertarian Heritage. Number 24, 2004. Pages 1-7.]

“We have seen that private appropriation of land in any form, whether limited by Individualist Anarchism to occupying owners or not, means the unjust distribution of a vast fund of social wealth called rent, which can by no means be claimed as due to the labor of any particular individual or class of individuals. We have seen that Communist Anarchism, though it partly—and only partly—avoids the rent dilliculty, is, in the condition of morals developed under existing Unsocialism, impracticable. We have seen that the delegation of individual powers by voting; the creation of authoritative public bodies; the supremacy of the majority in the last resort; and the establishment and even endowment, either directly and officially or indirectly and unconsciously, of conventional forms of practice in religion, medicine, education, food, clothing, and criminal law, are, whether they be evils or not, inherent in society itself, and must be submitted to with the help of such protection against their abuse as democratic institutions more than any others afford. When Democracy fails, there is no antidote for intolerance save the spread of better sense. No form of Anarchism yet suggested provides any escape. Like bad weather in winter, intolerance does much mischief; but as, when we have done our best in the way of overcoats, umbrellas, and good fires, we have to put up with the winter; so, when we have done our best in the way of Democracy, decentralization, and the like, we must put up with the State.” [Bernard Shaw. The Impossibilities of Anarchism. London: The Fabian Society. 1895. Page 23.]

“The so-called ‘sharing economy’ is sometimes also called the ‘gig economy’—arguably a more accurate term, because ‘sharing economy’ carries overtones of cooperation and mutuality that are (to say the least) grossly misleading. In the case of ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft it’s misleading because it suggests the direct sharing of rides between drivers and riders when drivers are for all practical purposes employees of the company that holds ‘intellectual property’ rights on the sharing app, and riders are its customers. Uber drivers are in the news, both for filing class action suits against the company to toss aside the fiction that they’re self-employed, and launching strikes on their own initiative for to protest Uber’s steep, repeated rate cuts. Such resistance underlines the unacceptability of the status quo; but the question remains of what to replace it with.

“To repeat, the gig economy as we know it is unacceptable. It’s an entirely parasitic arrangement in which a capitalist corporation uses its ownership of a proprietary platform to insert itself between drivers and riders and extract tribute for letting them interact with each other. But in replacing this framework, we can either go backwards or forwards.…

“The way forward from the Uber model is a mixture of open-source apps, stakeholder cooperatives of service providers and customers, and worker-controlled institutional mechanisms like revived guilds or cooperatively owned temp agencies for pooling costs and risks to supply the benefits currently supplied by (a decreasing percentage of) capitalist employers.…

“… the increased productivity of combined labor—a function resulting from the cooperation of the workers themselves, and more efficiently managed by those same workers than by overseers representing absentee owners—became yet another cash cow for capitalist employers to extract rents from, through their preemption of the function of coordinating advances of credit between producers.

“What [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon proposed was mutualism?cutting out this usurped role of the capitalist employer in alliance with the state, which parasitized on the social nature of production and the cooperation of workers themselves, and letting the workers themselves directly organize the mutual credit function for themselves and keep for themselves the full benefits of increased productivity for cooperation.

“This model is today more relevant than ever.”

[Kevin Carson. Which Way for the Gig Economy? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. Pages 1-3.]

“[Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon’s theory is the sum and substance of scientific anarchism.” [Herbert L. Osgood, “Scientific Anarchism.” Political Science Quarterly. Volume 4, number 1, March 1889. Pages 1-36.]

“What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which manifest themselves in the necessary concatenation and succession of phenomena in the physical and social worlds? Indeed, against these laws revolt is not only forbidden—it is even impossible. We may misunderstand them or not know them at all, but we cannot disobey them; because they constitute the basis and fundamental conditions of our existence; they envelop us, penetrate us, regulate all our movements, thoughts, and acts; even when we believe that we disobey them, we only show their omnipotence.

“Yes, we are absolutely the slaves of these laws. But in such slavery there is no humiliation, or, rather, it is not slavery at all. For slavery supposes an external master, a legislator outside of him whom he commands, while these laws are not outside of us; they are inherent in us; they constitute our being, our whole being, physically, intellectually, and morally: we live, we breathe, we act, we think, we wish only through these laws. Without them we are nothing, we are not. Whence, then, could we derive the power and the wish to rebel against them?”

[Mikhail Bakunin. God and the State. Benjamin R. Tucker, translator. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1970. Pages 28-29.]

“… if the gigantic efforts of the most wonderful geniuses the world has ever known, and who through at least thirty centuries have each undertaken anew this labor of Sisyphus, have resulted only in rendering the mystery still more incomprehensible—Bow can we hope that it will be unveiled for us by the uninspired speculations of some pedantic disciple of an artificially warmed-over metaphysics?—and this at a time when all vital and serious minds have turned away from that ambiguous science which came as a result of a compromise—which doubtless can be explained by history—between the unreason of faith and sound scientific reason.” [Mikhail Bakunin. The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism. G. P. Maximoff, editor. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe imprint of The Macmillan Company. 1964. Page 61.]

“… while I am a supporter of liberty, that primary condition of humanity, my reckoning is that equality should be established in the world by means of the sponta neous organization of labor and of collective ownership of producers’ associations freely organized and federated into communes, and, through the equally spontaneous federation of those communes—but not by means of State supervision from above.

“This is the point which is the main bone of contention between the revolutionary socialists or collectivists and the authoritarian communists who argue in favor of absolute initiative on the part of the State. Their goals are the same: both parties wish to see the creation of a new social order rooted exclusively in the organization of collective endeavor, inescapably incumbent upon each and every body in consequence of the force of things, in equal economic circumstances tor all and in collective appropriation of the instruments of labor.”

[Mikhail Bakunin, “Who Am I?” No Gods, No Masters. Complete and unabridged. Paul Sharkey, translator. Daniel Guérin, editor. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2005. Pages 147-149.]

“There must be anarchy, there must be—if the revolution is to become and remain alive, real, and powerful—the greatest possible awakening of all the local passions and aspirations; a tremendous awakening of spontaneous life everywhere After the initial revolutionary victory the political revolutionaries, those advocates of brazen dictatorship, will try to squelch the popular passions. They appeal for order, for trust in, for submission to those who, in the course and in the name of the Revolution, seized and legalized tlicir own dictatorial powers; this is how such political revolutionaries reconstitute the State. We, on the contrary, must awaken and foment all the dynamic passions of the people. We must bring forth anarchy, and in the midst of the popular tempest, we must be the invisible pilots guiding the Revolution, not by any kind of overt power but by the collective dictatorship of all our allies [members of the anarchist vanguard organization International Alliance of Social Democracy], a dictatorship without tricks, without official titles, without official rights, and therefore all the more powerful, as it does not carry the trappings of power This is the only dictatorship I will accept, but in order to act, it must first be created, it must be prepared and organized in advance, for it will not come into being by itself, neither by discussions, nor by theoretical disputations, nor by mass propaganda meetings.…” [Mikhail Bakunin, “Letter to Albert Richard (1870).” Bakunin on Anarchy. Sam Dolgoff, editor. New York: Vintage Books imprint of Random House. 1972. Pages 177-182.]

“… the abolition of the state, in [Karl] Marx’s view and in [Mikhail] Bakunin’s, was not an end but a beginning, and that neither was inclined to treat revolutionary means and revolutionary ends separately. Neither Marx nor Bakunin, in other words, treated tactical means as though the end could be taken as invariant or simply assumed as a ‘given.’ The participants in the dispute believed in the necessity or desirability of revolution; but unless we bear in mind that they were also afraid that the wrong kind of revolution – the kind propounded by the other side – might ensue, the dispute itself makes no sense. The protagonists in the Marx-Bakunin dispute were agreed basically on one thing and one thing only: that the dispute itself mattered, since its outcome would affect the direction of future society. What explains the intensity of their debate is the hothouse atmosphere in which it was conducted; Marx and Bakunin alike believed that future society would be stamped by its origins, that it had nowhere from which to emerge but the organization of the revolutionary movement itself, and that each and every move made within the International embodied a real futurity.” [Paul Thomas. Karl Marx and the Anarchists. London and Boston, Massachusetts: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1980. Page 342.]

“[Karl] Marx’s first meeting with Mikhail Bakunin in 1847 was amicable. Sixteen years later, however, he crossed swords with Bakunin, who had by then formed his own anarchist current. The setting was the just-founded International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) or First International. At the heart of their differences was whether workers should engage in political action, with Marx in favor and Bakunin opposed.…

“Marx and [Friedrich] Engels were able to marshal forth enough evidence to convince the delegates to the most representative meeting of the IWA, the Hague Congress, that indeed Bakunin and company had violated its organizational norms. His and his followers’ expulsion registered that fact.”

[August M. Nimtz, “Marxism Versus Anarchism: The First Encounter.” Science & Society. Volume 79, number 2, April 2015. Pages 153-175.]

“In the 1870s Russian anarchists mounted their own critique of capitalism. Like [Karl] Marx, [Mikhail] Bakunin recognised the class basis of capitalist exploitation. He distinguished between productive and exploitative labour. Workers performed productive labour; capitalists, living on profits, rents and interest, did not. Inheritance was a key to class formation. It enabled the heirs of the capitalist to live without working. As long as property and capital existed, on the one hand, and labour existed, on the other, the worker would remain slave to the capitalist master. Like Marx, Bakunin believed that to survive, capitalist industry and banking must expand at the expense of smaller enterprises. Wealth concentrates in fewer hands and the working class the other hand, defended the division of labour as necessary if society were not to remain stagnant.” [Wayne Dowler, “The intelligentsia and capitalism.” A History of Russian Thought. William Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord, editors. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 2010. Pages 263-285.]

“[Mikhail] Bakunin had a gospel purer than [Karl] Marx, and hence those who were to subdue the world had, as a preliminary to the greater under taking, to fight a civil war to subdue themselves. So the International went down, not by the attacks of Governments from the outside, but from internal explosions. In 1872 its headquarters were moved to America, which was a politic way of burying it. But, in 1889, it was born again, and up till the war it steadily grew in numbers. To it were affiliated the working class movements of every nation in the world. But the war broke out. Fear, nationalist influences, the discipline of the State, the comparative suddenness of the outburst, divided the International into its national sections, and there was nothing for it but a period when nearly every Socialist Party in the warring nations ranged itself behind its Government, accepted Government explanations for the tragedy, and, under stress of invasion or the fear of invasion, or determined to ward off the terrible humiliation and political and economic consequences of defeat, set aside all other thoughts than that of military victory as a preliminary to any peace settlement.” [J. Ramsay MacDonald. Socialism: Critical and Constructive. London and New York: Cassell and Company, Ltd. 1921. Page 58.]

“Decentralization entered city planning as a mere strategem for community design, while alternative technology became a narrow discipline, increasingly confined to the academy and to a new breed of technocrats. In turn, each notion became divorced from a critical analysis of society-from a radical theory of social ecology.” [Murray Bookchin. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Palo Alto, California: Cheshire Books. 1982. Pages 2-3.]

“… let us frankly acknowledge that organic societies spontaneously evolved values that we rarely can improve. The crucial distinction in radical theory between the ‘realm of necessity’ and the ‘realm of freedom’—a distinction that [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon and [Karl] Marx alike brought to radical ideology—is actually a social ideology that emerges along with rule and exploitation. Viewed against the broad tableau of class ideologies, few distinctions have done more than this one to validate authority and domination.” [Murray Bookchin. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Palo Alto, California: Cheshire Books. 1982. Page 319.]

“English socialism today is riddled by movements or tendencies that emphasize the locality rather than the nation-state, a new ‘local socialism’ from which there is much to be learned. In any case, it is only on the local level – in the village, town, city, or neighborhood – that a new politics can be developed, one which brings together all of these ‘forces’ as a form of ecological politics. Here, in municipalities, where people live out their lives in the most immediate and personal sense, we find the locus of real popular power. This public sphere provides the existential arena that makes for citizenship in an active sense. Social ecology brings all of these threads together in its opposition to hierarchy and domination as a critical theory and its emphasis on participation and differentiation as a reconstructive theory.” [Murray Bookchin. Post-Scarcity Anarchism. Second edition. Buffalo, New York: Black Rose Books. 1986. Pages 42-43.]

“In the 1970s Murray Bookchin’s Post-Scarcity Anarchism argued that the ‘affinity group’ could be regarded as ‘a new type of extended family, in which kinship ties are replaced by deeply empathetic human relationships—relationships nourished by common revolutionary ideas and practice.’ In the context of an affinity-group encounter, ‘class’ perhaps evokes something meaningful principally in terms of a class-conscious ruling elite. The rest of us, those who do not rule, are an assorted and fragmented layering of disparate people who are neither conscious of class nor motivated to act in its name.” [Andy Merrifield, “Crowd Politics.” New Left Review. Series II, number 71, September–October 2011. Pages 103-114.]

“One of the most significant methodological contributions of social ecological research has been the development of standardized scales to measure the psychosocial attributes of different environments …. From the use of these instruments in a variety of settings (e. g., dormitories, classrooms, offices, hospitals), three categories of environmental attributes have been delineated: relationship dimensions, personal development dimensions, and system maintenance dimensions. These categories provide the basis for evaluating behavior settings along standardized dimensions, and for relating the obtained environmental profiles to psychological, social, and physical conditions within the setting.” [Arnold Binder, Daniel Stokols, Ralph Catalano, “Social Ecology: An Emerging Multidiscipline.” The Journal of Environmental Education. Volume 7, number 2, 1975. Pages 32-43.]

“Those of us who knew Murray [Bookchin] personally understood that he had privately rejected anarchism as such in 1995, around the time he wrote ‘Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism.’ In that booklet he essentially was saying, If anarchism continues in this vein, I’ll have to leave the movement. But in reality he had already left, emotionally and intellectually. Still, for four years he hesitated to make a public break. He had forty years of history with the movement and many anarchist friends. He had anarchist publishers and a major reputation. Was he going to jettison that? But Murray, to his credit, never made the intellectual mistake of caring about reputation. He cared only about doing what he thought was right.

“Why, then, did he procrastinate with the break? In my view, an important reason was his age. He had just been through a vicious fight with the lifestyle anarchists. He might now write an article called ‘Communalism vs. Anarchism,’ but if he did so he would open up another fight. At seventy-five, he felt himself to be too fragile, and his health too poor, to withstand the counterattack.”

[Janet Biehl. Bookchin Breaks with Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Pages 28-29.]

“Perhaps the foremost project that envisages a different sort of localism today is that of social ecology, which has strong roots in the traditional anarchist (or liberal) invocation of direct democracy (or community), in the form of extensively (even if never completely) self-reliant communities. Social ecology is often associated narrowly with the eco-anarchist thought of Murray Bookchin. But it really encompasses a host of approaches that are thoroughly localist in their views and rest on some mix of community and cooperative economics, semi-autarchic trade, local currency systems, and direct democracy in enterprises and local government.” [Gregory Albo, “The Limits of Eco-Localism: Scale, Strategy, Socialism.” Socialist Register. Volume 43, 2007. Pages 337-363.]

“Anarcho-Syndicalists are of the opinion that political parties, even when they bear a Socialist name, are not fitted to perform either of these two tasks. The mere fact that, even in those countries where political Socialism commanded powerful organizations and had millions of voters behind it, the workers had never been able to dispense with trade unions, because legislation offered them no protection in their struggle for daily bread, testifies to this. It frequently happened that in just those sections of the country where the Socialist parties were strongest the wages of workers were lowest and the conditions of labour worst. That was the case, for example, in the northem industrial districts of France, where Socialists were in the majority in numerous city administrations, and in Saxony and Silesia, where throughout its existence German Social Democracy had been able to show a large following.” [Rudolf Rocker. Anarcho-Syndicalism. Alexander Berkman and Ray E. Chase, translators. London: Pluto Press. 1989. Pages 86-87.]

“Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International and which were best understood and most strongly held by the libertarian wing of the great workers’ alliance. Its present day representatives are the federations in the different countries of the revived International Workingmen’s Association of 1922, the most important of which is the powerful Federation of Labour (Confederación National de Trabajo) in Spain. Its theoretical assumptions are based on the teachings of Libertarian or Anarchist Socialism, while its form of organisation is largely borrowed from revolutionary Syndicalism, which in the years from 1900 to 1910 experienced a marked upswing, particularly in France. It stands in direct opposition to the political Socialism of our day, represented by the parliamentary labour parties in the different countries. While in the time of this First International barely the first beginnings of these parties existed in Germany, France and Switzerland, today we are in a position to estimate the results of their tactics for Socialism and the labour movement after more than sixty years’ activity in all countries.” [Rudolf Rocker. Anarchosyndicalism: Theory and Practice. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1938. Page 36.]

“First and foremost: the historical record shows that anarchism and its primary mass-organisational strategy, syndicalism, are a remarkably coherent and universalist set of theories and practices, despite the movement grappling with an immensely diverse set of circumstances. From the establishment of the first non-White unions in South Africa and the first unions in China, through the resistance to fascism in Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe and the Southern Cone of Latin America—to the establishment of practical anarchist control of cities and regions, sometimes ephemeral, sometimes longer—lived.…

“In sum, the lessons for anarchists and syndicalists is that the movement always was, and remains, universally ideologically and ethically coherent because of its implacable engagements with the abuse of power at all levels—from the domestic home to the empire—in all, intersectional, circumstances: gender, race, colour, creed, sexuality, ability and so on.”

[Michael Schmidt, “A Map Towards Revolution: An Interview with Michael Schmidt.” Imminent Rebellion. Number 13, 2014. Pages 56-64.]

“… within the French, Italian and Spanish syndicalist movements anarchists or so-called ‘anarcho-syndicalists’ were able to gain significant, albeit variable, influence. They were to be responsible in part for the respective movements’ rejection of political parties, elections and parliament in favour of direct action by the unions, as well as their conception of a future society in which, instead of a political state apparatus, the only form of government would be the economic administration of industry exercised directly by the workers themselves. Other features of the syndicalist movements in these three countries, such as federalism, anti-clericalism and anti-militarism, were also profoundly influenced by specifically anarchist ideas and organisation.” [Ralph Darlington, “Syndicalism and the influence of anarchism in France, Italy and Spain.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 17, number 2, autumn–winter 2009. Pages 29-54.]

“I should say to begin with that the term anarchism is used to cover quite a range of political ideas, but I would prefer to think of it as the libertarian left, and from that point of view anarchism can be conceived as a kind of voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist, in the tradition of say [Mikhail] Bakunin and [Peter] Kropotkin and others. They had in mind a highly organized form of society, but a society that was organized on the basis of organic units, organic communities. And generally they meant by that the workplace and the neighborhood, and from those two basic units there could derive through federal arrangements a highly integrated kind of social organization, which might be national or even international in scope. And the decisions could be made over a substantial range, but by delegates who are always part of [he organic community from which they come, to which they return and in which, in fact, they live.” [Noam Chomsky, “The Relevance of Anarcho-Syndicalism.” Chomsky on Anarchism. Barry Pateman, editor. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2005. Pages 133-148.]

“Anarchosyndicalists sought, even under capitalism, to create ‘free associations of free producers’ that would engage in militant struggle and prepare to take over the organization of production on a democratic basis. These associations would serve as ‘a practical school of anarchism.’ If private ownership of the means of production is, in [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon’s often quoted phrase, merely a form of ‘theft’—‘the exploitation of the weak by the strong’—control of production by a state bureaucracy, no matter how benevolent its intentions, also does not create the conditions under which labor, manual and intellectual, can become the highest want in life. Both, then, must be overcome.” [Noam Chomsky. On Anarchism. New York and London: The New Press. 2013. Page 11.]

“Once the revolution was underway propaganda for construction would have to take over from demands for destruction if anarchism was to have any influence at all. This necessitated clearly distinguishing between individualism and communism. However at the same time there arose – for non-individualists the question of tactics and strategies in an ongoing revolution. This led to a clear separation between the anarcho-communists with their focus on the problem of organising the consumption of the ‘masses,’ and the Syndicalists with their focus on the problems of the revolutionary fighting and post-revolutionary productive organisation of the ‘workers.’ Anarchocommunism, lacking any clear tactical or strategic bases, then split between simple armed opposition to everything ‘statist’ and collaboration with (and subordination to) the bolshevik party. Anarchosyndicalism, more coherent in its organisational, tactical and post-revolutionary ideas than the other variants, also faced problems with the emergence of the factory committees which had no place in the original syndicalist scheme of things, but these problems were at least surmountable within its own universe of ideas. Despite this syndicalism was born and fated to remain a minority tendency in a trade union movement dominated by Mensheviks and a factory committee movement with strong links to the bolsheviks.” [G. P. Maximoff. Constructive Anarchism: The development of anarcho-syndicalist ideas on working class organisation and the revolutionary struggle for the libertarian reconstruction of society, from the 1st International to the 1930’s. A defence of Anarcho-syndicalism against ‘Platformism’ and ‘Synthetical’ anarchism. Ada Siegel, translator. Sydney, Australia: Monty Miller Press. 1988. Page 3.]

“It has been cynically observed that, despite the wealth of the anarchist tradition, every young generation that finds the way to anarchism for itself, and not by way of introduction from others, falls into the delusion of being the first to discover it. By extension the hippies believe they were the first ever to drop out of society. This Columbian delusion is harmless enough, except historically; to it the generation of the sixties, or at least its outside interpreters, has faithfully adhered. [Rudi] Dutschke has re-stated, and the discovery re-echoed around the militant world, the case for council communism, often distorted today by Maoist or Ho Chi Minhite phrases which express a confusion of thought in opposition phraseology. It is also sometimes referred to as ‘anarcho-Marxism,’ as if this were a modem amalgam resolving ancient antagonisms. Again this is misleading, as anarcho-syndicalists (anarchists within the labour movement) always accepted [Karl] Marx’s economic criticisms and analysis and disagreed with Marxism only on the need for legalism, political leadership, the question of State control or the role of the party. All this is exactly what is accepted by ‘anarcho-Marxists,’ like Cohn-Bendit, from the anarchist tradition.” [Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer. The Floodgates of Anarchy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1970. Pages 22-23.]

“… the argument of my paper might be summed up as follows: [Noam] Chomsky does one thing in his linguistics and something quite contrary in his political writing. In linguistics, he is scientistic, dressing up vacuous claims in scientific terms, and pretending as if Chomskian linguistics were vastly more scientific than anything before (or since). What is particularly objectionable is Chomsky’s penchant for taking plain words from the common language, giving them incredible reinterpretations, and then using these words to announce the ‘bold new discoveries’ of his linguistics e.g. that children do not learn language, but rather already have/know language(s). Whereas in his political writings, Chomsky follows an entirely different course, revealing a highly desirable sensitivity to ordinary language and to ordinary persons’ – to the populace’s – capacity for understanding, and demonstrating with countless examples how media and government abuse the common language to suit their purpose(s).” [Rupert Read, “What is ‘Chomskyism’: Or, Chomsky against Chomsky.” Language, Mind and Society: Chomsky and his Critics—An Alternative ‘Raven.’ Brian Bamford, editor. Rochdale, England: B. Bamford. 2001. Pages 33-51.]

“What I find disturbing about much anarcho-syndicalist literature is its tendency to claim that anarcho-syndicalism is the alpha and omega of ‘true’ anarchism, in contrast to other libertarian tendencies that involve a broader view of social struggle than one that is largely focused on traditional conflicts between wage labor and capital. Certainly not all anarcho-syndicalists would be unsympathetic to, say, eco-anarchism or a communitarian anarchism that is concerned with confederations of villages, towns, and cities, but a degree of dogmatism and stodgy fixity persists among worker-oriented anarchists that I believe should hardly be characteristic of left libertarians generally.” [Murray Bookchin, “The Ghost of Anarcho-syndicalism.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 1, number 1, April 1993. Pages 3-24.]

“It is true … that many Marxists became syndicalists as ‘a reaction’ against social democracy. Sadly, he fails to raise the question of why social democracy became reformist, instead stating that these were ‘reformist socialist parties’ so ignoring that, at the time, there were not – they considered themselves as revolutionary parties explicitly following the ideas of [Karl] Marx and [Friedrich] Engels on ‘political action.’ True, a substantial revisionist tendency existed within these parties and, moreover, their rhetoric was not reflected in their practice, but it should not be forgotten that they prided themselves in being revolutionary.” [Iain McKay, “Another View: Syndicalism, Anarchism and Marxism.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 20, number 1, spring–summer 2012. Pages 89-105.]

“By the General Strike, Syndicalism means a stoppage of work, the cessation of labor. Nor need such a strike be postponed until all the workers of a particular place or country are ready for it. As has been pointed out by Pelloutier, Pouget, as well as others, and particularly by recent events in England, the General Strike may be started by one industry and exert a tremendous force. It is as if one man suddenly raised the cry Stop the thief! Immediately others will take up the cry, till the air rings with it. The General Strike, initiated by one determined organization, by one industry or by a small, conscious minority among the workers, is the industrial cry of Stop the thief, which is soon taken up by many other industries, spreading like wildfire in a very short time.” [Emma Goldman. Syndicalism: Its Theory and Practice. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1913. Pages 1-2.]

“To anarcho-syndicalists, a viable alternative to capitalism is ‘libertarian communism,’ and this section describes it and shows how it can work.

“The ‘communist’ nations are no more, so arguing for a communist society may currently seem unrealistic. But true communism, libertarian communism, is not an authoritarian state-run economy like the Soviet Union. Libertarian communism is based on the principle of solidarity in a society without money. People work as a social duty; wages are unnecessary – ‘from each according to their ability’; and cash is no longer needed to acquire goods – ‘to each according to their need.’

“A libertarian communist economy, a system without the market and where everyone has equal rights to have their needs met, has always been the aim of anarcho-syndicalists. Workers’ self-management would amount to little in a world of inequality with decisions being dictated by the market. However, we have also been careful to always point out that any communist system will be nightmarish unless the people support it and are involved in running it. Anarcho-syndicalists have therefore always been careful to describe themselves as ‘libertarian,’ as opposed to authoritarian, communists.”

[Solidarity Federation. The Economics of Freedom: An anarcho-syndicalist alternative to capitalism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2003. Page 9.]

“The end of syndicalism corresponds to the end of workerism. For us it is also the end of the quantitive illusion of the party and the specific organization of synthesis. The revolt of tomorrow must look for new roads. Trade unionism is in its decline. In good as in evil with this structural form of struggle an era is disappearing, a model and a future world seen in terms of an improved and corrected reproduction of the old one. We are moving towards new and profound transformations. In the productive structure, in the social structure. Methods of struggle, perspectives, even short term projects are also transforming.” [Anonymous. Beyond Workerism — Beyond Syndicalism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 1.]

“Anarcho-syndicalism completely rejects top-down and centralized forms of organization. We believe that the best form of organization is that which flows from below, just as the best form of tactics are based on direct initiative from below. This means decisions being made in a decentralized way. Through such means as workplace or community assemblies. Places where all who attend can voice their opinion and help to shape (and later to carry out) policy.

“Unlike in the political parties or reformist trade unions, we propose a form of organization that rejects the concept of a permanent bureaucracy. Instead we propose the idea of individuals only holding elected office for a limited time period, such as a year. And even then, we think the majority should be able to recall them any time they want to. And at the end of their tenure, a person holding a responsible post should give up that position and let someone else do it for a while, so that the movement does not become dependent on just a few people, and as many people as possible can have the experience of carrying out responsibilities.”

[Editor. What is Anarchist Unionism? Pamphlet. San Francisco, California: Workers Solidarity Alliance. Circa 1980s. No pagination.]

“Feminism and anarchist unionism are not often mentioned in the same sentence. Among working people in general there seems to be 11810 or no knowledge of anarchist unionism or the impact such ideas have had on the American labor movement.

“Historically much organizing was done in male dominated industries. Little effort was made to organize the service and communication sectors which were heavily dominated by women workers But the revolutionary labor movement in America has never been exclusively male. Women have played a major role in all efforts to organize revolutionary unions. Anarchist women such as Lucy Parsons and Emma Goldman are only two examples of women involved in labor struggles.

“Our herstory is filled with countless examples of women taking control over our own struggles From the mines of New Mexico to the aluminum plants of Tennessee, from the packing houses of iowa to the garment shops of New York City, women organized themselves and, often, their male co-workers. In male dominated industries women walked the picket lines alongside of or instead of the men. Women often fought in the pitched battles with police, scabs and bosses. It was the women who ‘home visited’ the wives of scabs to make sure they became educated about the issues of that particular strike, and to oner mutual aid and support to those families who struck or were locked out by the boss. In the best of anarchist traditions, the women did this on their own.…

“The network [Free Women Network] is independent of any political organization and has accepted Anarcho-Syndicalism as a basic strategy. The group is non-sectarian. Network groups are encouraged to work with a wide variety of women’s organizations, with special emphasis being placed on abortion and employment rights.”

[Editor. Anarchist Unionism: The Feminist Connection. Pamphlet. New York: Workers Solidarity Alliance. Circa early 1990s. No pagination.]

“We focus on anarcho-syndicalism, the tradition we come from, but touch on numerous other lesser known radical currents along the way. We certainly don’t think we have all the answers, but we do think we’re at least asking the right kind of questions. How can we organise ourselves to both defend and advance our conditions? How can we oppose the attacks of both capital and the state, when dominant liberal and leftist approaches see the state as the protector of our ‘rights’ and push for participation in the parliamentary process? What kind of society are we fighting for, if not one ruled by the impersonal forces of capital and the violence and hierarchy of the state?

“We see revolutionary theory as an aid to organising workers struggle and not, as is so often the case, as a means of dominating and controlling it, or of producing dense and enigmatic tomes to establish one’s credentials as a ‘thinker’. As capitalism is dynamic so must be the methods we use as workers to fight it. It is only through our collective immersion in day-to-day struggles that we can adapt and change tactics to meet changing conditions. And as our tactics change and develop so must our ideas. Doing and thinking are but moments of the same process of organisation. It is through our involvement in our daily struggles that, as an anarcho-syndicalist union initiative, we are able to ensure that revolutionary theory keeps pace with practical realities and remains relevant to the workers’ movement and to our everyday lives.”

[Editor. Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Class Struggle. London: Solidarity Federation—International Workers Association. 2017. No pagination.]

“One of the best ways to get solidarity is to give it, so if you’ve visited other workers on strike recently then invite them. You might also leaflet a big workplace like a hospital if there is one very near you, telling them that you will be striking and asking for support on the picket line. Building up links gradually with other workplaces that you have some connection with will pay off when you strike.

“Visiting supporters from political organisations can be very helpful to the picket line, but a lot of pickets will have had bad experiences with this in the past and will be wary or unfriendly. It’s important not to come across as the stereotypical spotty student lecturing the workers on how they are doing it wrong. The first step is simply talking to people. Don’t stand to the side talking to your own friends, ask questions about the strike, ask people about what it’s like to work there, most people like a chance to talk about themselves. Bringing food is usually a good icebreaker. Ask before putting up your own banner.”

[Editor. Strike: A Guide to Walking Out. London: Solidarity Federation—International Workers Association. 2012. No pagination.]

“The problem of workers’ councils having a monopoly of economic decision-making is addressed in Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel’s work on participatory economics. Parecon basically advocates federation of workers’ councils based in the workplaces and consumers’ councils based in the neighborhood. Parecon lacks a revolutionary praxis; they have no way to get there proposed federation. I think there is a way… and that is a worker and consumer syndicalism. We need to organize not only at the point of production, but also along the lines of transportation and communication, as well as at the point of consumption.

“Consumers, like workers, need to organize for their own interests, and while more difficult to organize than workers, organizing one can greatly support the other. There are many similarities between organizing a labor union, and organizing a tennants’ union or a bus riders’ union. Workers and consumers have more in common with each other than they do with the capitalists and bosses.

“Syndicalism should be thought of as the practice of organizing along principles of direct action and direct democracy by the exploited for economic action against their exploiters. It’s primary weapon being refusal — refusal to work, and refusal to buy. From slow down on the job, to sabotage, from putting your rent in escrow until the leak is fixed, to a mass rent revolt until rent is lowered. As struggle increases, we move from refusal to occupation and expropriation.”

[Flint Jones. A New Syndicalism? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2001. Page 2.]

“… the classical liberal view develops from a certain concept of human nature, one that stresses the importance of diversity and free creation, and therefore this view is in fundamental opposition to industrial capitalism with its wage slavery, its alienated labor, and its hierarchic and authoritarian principles of social and economic organization. At least in its ideal form, classical liberal thought is opposed to the concepts of possessive individualism, that are intrinsic to capitalist ideology. For this reason, classical liberal thought seeks to eliminate social fetters and to replace them with social bonds, and not with competitive greed, predatory individualism, and not, of course, with corporate empires—state or private. Classical libertarian thought seems to me, therefore, to lead directly to libertarian socialism, or anarchism if you like, when combined with an understanding of industrial capitalism.” [Noam Chomsky. Government in the Future. New York: Seven Stories Press. 2005. Pages 22-23.]

“I think that the libertarian socialist concepts, and by that I mean a range of thinking that extends from left-wing Marxism through to anarchism, I think that these are fundamentally correct and that they are the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society.…

“Man will, in other words, not be free to inquire and create, to develop his own potentialities to their fullest. The worker will remain a fragment of a human being, degraded, a tool in the productive process directed from above. And the ideas of revolutionary libertarian socialism, in this sense, have been submerged in the industrial societies of the past half century. The dominant ideologies have been those of state socialism and state capitalism.”

[Noam Chomsky, “Government in the Future.” Talk given at the Poetry Center. New York City. February 16th, 1970. No pagination. Retrieved on March 12th, 2017.]

“Take a look at American society. Imagine yourself looking down from Mars. What do you see?

“In the United States, there are professed values like democracy. In a democracy, public opinion is going to have some influence on policy, and then the government carries out actions determined by the population. That’s what democracy means.

“It’s important to understand that privileged and powerful sectors have never liked democracy and for very good reasons. Democracy puts power into the hands of the general population and takes it away from the privileged and the powerful. It’s a principle of concentration of wealth and power.…

“Concentration of wealth yields concentration of power, particularly so as the cost of elections skyrockets, which forces the political parties even more deeply into the pockets of major corporations. This political power quickly translates into legislation that increases the concentration of wealth. So fiscal policy, like tax policy, deregulation, rules of corporate governance, and a whole variety of measures—political measures designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power—yields more political power to do the same thing. And that’s what we’ve been seeing. So we have this kind of ‘vicious cycle’ in progress.…

“I mean, the wealthy always did have an inordinate amount of control over policy. Actually, that goes back centuries. It is so traditional that it was described by Adam Smith in 1776. You read the famous Wealth of Nations. He says, in England, ‘the principal architects of policy’ are the people who own the society—in his day, ‘merchants and manufacturers.’ And they make sure that their own interests are very well cared for, however ‘grievous’ the impact on the people of England, or others. Now it’s not merchants and manufacturers, it’s financial institutions and multinational corporations. The people who Adam Smith called the ‘masters of mankind’—and they’re following ‘the vile maxim,’ ‘All for ourselves and nothing for anyone else.’ They’re just going to pursue policies that benefit them and harm everyone else.

“Well, that’s a pretty general maxim of politics that’s been studied closely in the United States. Those are the policies that have increasingly been followed, and in the absence of a general popular reaction, that’s pretty much what you’d expect.

[Noam Chomsky. Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. Peter Hutchinson, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott, editors. New York: Seven Stories Press. 2017. Kindle edition.]

“… we take [Noam] Chomsky’s social views to be marked by four key claims: (1) human beings have a ‘moral nature’ and a fundamental interest in autonomy; (2) these basic features of our nature support a libertarian socialist social ideal; (3) the interest in autonomy and the moral nature of human beings help to explain certain important features of actual social systems, including for example the use of deception and force to sustain unjust conditions, as well as their historical evolution; and (4) these same features of human nature provide reasons for hope that the terms of social order will improve from a moral point of view.” [Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, “Knowledge, Morality and Hope: The Social Thought of Noam Chomsky.” New Left Review. Series I, number 187, May–June 1981. Pages 5-27.]

“A revolutionary movement is naturally sobered by the possibility of acquiring power without revolution. Socialists have largely ceased to be revolutionary, and socialism has thus almost ceased to be a distinctive ideology. In a world obviously plagued by excessive nationalism, it must speak cautiously about the extreme nationalism of its own centralization, about the military implications of its gov ernmental mobilization, and especially about its implications for international commercial policy. It is senseless to talk about world socialism and almost senseless to talk about order among national state socialisms. Socialists are thus in an awful dilemma, being deeply internationalist in sentiment and irredeemably nationalist in their economic program just as they must be at once syndicalist in tactics and anti-syndicalist in strategy or principle.” [Henry Simons, “Libertarian Socialism.” The Good Society. Volume 9, number 3, 2000. Pages 4.]

“The pair of libertarian socialist principles I shall discuss concern economic structures. These principles define the rights that people would have over their person and the external world in a just socialist society. They comprise the principle of effective self-ownership (promising substantive autonomy), and the principle of joint ownership in the means of production (promising substantive equality of condition). If my argument is sound, then libertarianism has, in a sense, come full circle: the inegalitarian libertarians of the twentieth century, such as Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard, draw their concepts and categories from a long tradition of thought that includes the communist libertarians of the nineteenth century, such as [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon and [Peter] Kropotkin, and many nonegalitarians, such as Max Stirner and Benjamin Tucker. Leftlibertarians such as Peter Vallentyne and Michael Otsuka in turn draw upon Nozick and Rothbard with a view to transforming libertarianism into an equality-sensitive political philosophy. The present paper shows why the nineteenth-century egalitarian libertarians were not misguided in thinking that a thoroughly libertarian form of communism is possible at the level of principle.” [Nicholas Vrousalis, “Libertarian Socialism: A Better Reconciliation between Equality and Self-Ownership.” Social Theory and Practice. Volume 37, number 2, April 2011. Pages 211-226.]

“The Hungarian libertarian socialists and anarchists, like process thought thinkers, emphasize both the individual and the community, the free, relational individual with a strong sense of solidarity.” [Leslie A. Muray, “Libertarian Socialism, Anarchism, and Process Thought.” Encounter. Volume 69, number 4, 2008. Pages 47-63.]

“Believing that the best way to maximize our genetically endowed freedom is through anarchism, [Noam] Chomsky defines his worldview as Libertarian Socialism. Such a brand of anarchism has both a historical force and stands for a deeply positive ideology that aims towards the absolute welfare of the public. But paradoxically it has been misconstrued by the media and its controllers, and this school of thought takes a rather destructive and negative complexion.” [Pradeepta Ranjan Pattanayak, “Anarchy as a Socio-Political Philosophy: Noam Chomsky in Perspective.” Odisha Review. April–May, 2014. Pages 110-114.]

“… anarchism, libertarian socialism, and anarcho-syndicalism provide a paradigmatic example of a ‘romantic anti-capitalism of the left.’ As a result, defining [Franz] Kafka’s thought as romantic seems to me entirely pertinent but it does not mean that he is not ‘of the left’ or, more concretely, a romantic socialist of a libertarian tendency. As is the case with all romantics, his critique of modern civilization is tinged with nostalgia for the past which, for him, is represented by the Yiddish culture of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. With notable insight, André Breton wrote that ‘in marking the present minute,’ Kafka’s thought ‘turns symbolically backwards with the hands of the clock of the synagogue’ of Prague.” [Michael Löwy. Franz Kafka and Libertarian Socialism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1997. Page 7.]

“Two models of ‘socialism’ presently prevail. They are Social Democracy and Bureaucratic Collectivism. Both the former with its concentration on the welfare state and state intervention in the economy and the latter with its plan attempt to administer society according to a bureaucratic plan or plans and attempt to fulfill the needs of their societies for ever more capital and consumer goods. In both these societies there is a hierarchy that is not hidden by the formal democracy in Social Democracy or the rhetoric of Bureaucratic Collectivism.

“Against these two models of society Libertarian Socialists have upheld the principle of self-determination which means not only the control of impersonal economic processes but the collective administration of society by all its members. This is not to be confused with forms of ‘workers’ control’ which decide how to implement decisions arrived at from above. Instead it means the democratic determination as well as implementation of the goals of a society.”

[Tom McLaughlin. Libertarian Socialism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1977. Page 1.]

“What is implied by the term ‘libertarian socialism’?

“The idea that socialism is first and foremost about freedom and therefore about overcoming the domination, repression, and alienation that block the free flow of human creativity, thought, and action. We do not equate socialism with planning, state control, or nationalization of industry, although we understand that in a socialist society (not ‘under’ socialism) economic activity will be collectively controlled, managed, planned, and owned. Similarly, we believe that socialism will involve equality, but we do not think that socialism is equality, for it is possible to conceive of a society where everyone is equally oppressed. We think that socialism is incompatible with one-party states, with constraints on freedom of speech, with an elite exercising power ‘on behalf of’ the people, with leader cults, with any of the other devices by which the dying society seeks to portray itself as the new society.” [Ulli Diemer. What is Libertarian Socialism? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1997. Page 2.]

“If our productive powers were fully applied to inceasing the stock of the staple necessities for life; if a modification of the present conditions of property increased the number of producers by all those who are not producers of wealth now; and if manual labor reconquered its place of honor in society, the communist tendencies already existing would immediately enlarge their sphere of application.

“Taking all this into account, and still more the practical aspects of the question as to how private property might become common property, most of the anarchists maintain that the very next step to be made by society, as soon as the present regime of property undergoes a modification, will be in a communist sense. We are communists. But our communism is not that of the authoritarian school: it is anarchist communism, communism without government, free communism. It is a synthesis of the two chief aims pursued by humanity since the dawn of its history—economic freedom and political freedom.

“I have already said that anarchism means no-government.…

“By taking for our watchword anarchy in its sense of nogovernment, we intend to express a pronounced tendency of human society. In history we see that precisely those epochs when small parts of humanity broke down the power of their rulers and reassumed their freedom were epochs of the geatest progress, economic and intellectual.”

[Peter Kropotkin, “Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles.” Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets: A Collection of Writings by Peter Kropotkin. Roger N. Baldwin, editor. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1970. Pages 46-78.]

“Eskimo life is based upon communism. What is obtained by hunting and fishing belongs to the clan. But in several tribes, especially in the West, under the influence of the Danes, private property pene trates into their institutions. However, they have an original means for obviating the inconveniences arising from a personal accumulation of wealth which would soon destroy their tribal unity. When a man has grown rich, he convokes the folk of his clan to a great festival, and, after much eating, distributes among them all his fortune. On the Yukon river, … [one] saw an Aleonte family distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur dresses, 200 strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs, 200 beavers, and 500 zibelines. After that they took off their festival dresses, gave them away, and, putting on old ragged furs, addressed a few words to their kinsfolk, saying that though they are now poorer than any one of them, they have won their friendship. Like distributions of wealth appear to be a regular habit with the Eskimos, and to take place at a certain season, after an exhibition of all that has been obtained during the year.1 In my opinion these distributions reveal a very old institution, con temporaneous with the first apparition of personal wealth; they must have been a means for re-establishing equality among the members of the clan, after it had been disturbed by the enrichment of the few. The periodical redistribution of land and the periodical abandonment of all debts which took place in historical times with so many different races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a survival of that old custom. And the habit of either burying with the dead, or destroying upon his grave, all that belonged to him personally—a habit which we find among all primitive races—must have had the same origin.” [P. Kropotkin. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. New York: McClure Phillips & Co. 1902. Pages 97-98.]

“When a new factory is built in a village it attracts at once the girls, and partly also the boys of the neighbouring peasantry. The girls and boys are always happy to find an independent livelihood which emancipates them from the control of the family. Consequently, the wages of the factory girls are extremely low. At the same time the distance from the village to the factory being mostly great, the girls cannot return home every day, the less so as the hours of labour are usually long. So they stay all the week at the factory, in barracks, and they only return home on Saturday evening; while at sunrise on Monday a waggon makes the tour of the villages, and brings them back to the factory. Barrack life – not to mention its moral consequences – soon renders the girls quite unable to work in the fields. And, when they are grown up, they discover that they cannot maintain themselves at the low wages offered by the factory; but they can no more return to peasant life. It is easy to see what havoc the factory is thus doing in the villages, and how unsettled is its very existence, based upon the very low wages offered to country girls. It destroys the peasant home, it renders the life of the town worker still more precarious on account of the competition it makes to him; and the trade itself is in a perpetual state of unsettledness.” [Pëtr (Peter) Kropotkin. Fields, Factories and Workshops: or Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1912. Page 167.]

“The State Socialism of the collectivist system has certainly made some progress. State railways, State banking, and State trade in spirits have been introduced here and there. But every step made in this direction, even though it resulted in the cheapening of a given commodity, was found to be a new obstacle in the struggle of the working-men for their emancipation. So that we find now amongst the working-men, especially in England, the idea that even the working of such a vast national property as a railway-net could be much better handled by a Federated Union of railway employees, than by a State organization.

“On the other side, we see that countless attempts have been made all over Europe and America, the leading idea of which is, on the one side, to get into the hands of the working-men themselves wide branches of production, and, on the other side, always to widen in the cities the circles of the functions which the city performs in the interest of its inhabitants. Trade-unionism, with a growing tendency towards organizing the different trades internationally, and of being not only an instrument for improving the conditions of labour, but also to become an organization which might, at a given moment, take into its hands the management of production; Co-operativism, both for production and for distribution, both in industry and agriculture, and attempts at combining both sorts of co-operation in experimental colonies; and finally, the immensely varied field of the so-called Municipal Socialism — these are the three directions in which the greatest amount of creative power has been developed lately.

“Of course, none of these may, in any degree, be taken as a substitute for Communism, or even for Socialism, both of which imply the common possession of the instruments of production. But we certainly must look at all the just-mentioned attempts as upon experiments — like those which Owen, Fourier, and Saint Simon tried in their colonies — experiments which prepare human thought to conceive some of the practical forms in which a communist society might find its expression. The synthesis of all these partial experiments will have to be made some day by the constructive genius of some one of the civilized nations, and it will be done. But samples of the bricks out of which the great synthetic building will have to be built, and even samples of some of its rooms, are being prepared by the immense effort of the constructive genius of man.”

[P. Kropotkin. The Conquest of Bread. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1907. Pages xi-xii.]

“… among the French founders of the International there were those who had fought for the Republic and for the Commune. They were insistent that political activity should not be ignored and that it is not unimportant for the proletarian whether they live under a monarchy, a Republic, or a commune. They knew from their own experience that the triumph of conservatives or of imperialists meant repression in all directions, and an enormous weakening of the power of workers to combat the aggressive politics of the capitalists. They were not indifferent to politics, but they refused to see an instrument for the liberation of the working class in electoral politics or successes, or in the whole to-ing and fro-ing of political parties.” [Pëtr (Peter) Kropotkin. Syndicalism and Anarchism. J. Goddard, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1908. Page 3.]

“… the idea of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best means for producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals to arrange at all times for other forms of work, at harmony with their tastes or desires.” [Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association. 1910. Page 62.]

“… [The] free display of human energy being possible only under complete individual and social freedom, Anarchism directs its forces against the third and greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State, organized authority, or statutory law,—the dominion of human conduct.” [Emma Goldman. Anarchism: What It Really Stands For. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association. 1911. No pagination.]

“Oppression has dragged revolt before the tribunal of the Grand Inquisition. Dead words of the Law lay ready as in struments of torture. The District Attorney acted as accuser for the offended divinity. In the box sat the jurors, men with set faces, steadfast worshippers of the dogma. Soldiers and detectives formed nine-tenths of the audience; only a few friends of the accused had been fortunate enough to gain ad mission to the court.” [Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. Anarchism on Trial: Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman before the United States District Court in the City of New York, July, 1917. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association. 1917. Page 5.]

“ANARCHY, TODAY, IS ATTACK; it is war against every authority, every power, every State. In the future society, Anarchy will be defence, the prevention of the re-establishment of any authority, any power, any State: Full and complete liberty of the individual who, freely and driven only by his needs, by his tastes and his sympathies, unites with other individuals in a group or association; free development of the association, which is federated with others in the commune or the district; free development of the communes which are federated in the region; and soon—the regions in the nation; the nations in humanity.” [Carlo Cafiero, “Anarchy and Communism (1880).” Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume One—From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE To 1939). Robert Graham, editor. Montreal, Quebec: Black Rose Books. 2005. Pages 109-114.]

“There were four … agricultural communes within a three- or four-mile radius of Gulyai-Polye. In the whole district, however, there were many. But I shall dwell on these four communes because I myself played a direct part in organising them. In all of them the first fruitful beginnings took place under my supervision, or, in a few cases, in consultation with me. To one of them, perhaps the largest, I gave my physical labour two days a week, during the spring sowing in the fields behind a plough or seeder, and before and after sowing in domestic work on the plantations or in the machine shop and so on. The remaining four days of the week I worked in Gulyai-Polye in the Group of Anarchist-Communists and in the district Revolutionary Committee. This was demanded of me by members of the group and by all the communes. It was demanded too by the very fact of revolution, which required the grouping and drawing together of revolutionary forces against the counter-revolution advancing from the west in the form of German and Austro-Hungarian monarchist armies and the Ukrainian Central Rada.” [Nestor Makhno. The Manifesto of The Makhnovists. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1918. Page 2.]

“Anarchism, that beautiful ideal, was thus never quite available, or it was on a beckoning horizon that kept fading away. “Not for a hundred, not for five hundred years, perhaps,” [Emma] Goldman assured one journalist, ‘will the principles of anarchy triumph.’ The dense fog of ideology stood in the way. And the world’s shortcomings only emphasized how beautiful anarchism is—or would be, if only we could attain it.” [Don Herzog, “Romantic Anarchism and Pedestrian Liberalism.” Political Theory. Volume 35, number 3, June 2007. Pages 313-333.]

“[Peter] Kropotkin is one of the founders of anarchist social and political thought, and definitely belongs among the most inspiring authors in this field. My analysis is carried out with the objective of achieving a better understanding of today?s organizational reality and of conceiving viable alternatives. I shall clarify the knowledge and expertise which can be found in the often ignored anarchist heritage of political theory in the area of organization and management thinking.“ [Marius de Geus, “Peter Kropotkin’s anarchist vision of organization.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, 2014. Pages 843-871.]

“No revolution has yet tried the true way of liberty. None has had sufficient faith in it. Force and suppression, persecution, revenge, and terror have characterized all revolutions in the past and have thereby defeated their original aims. The time has come to try new methods, new ways. The social revolution is to achieve the emancipation of man through liberty, but if we have no faith in the latter, revolution becomes a denial and betrayal of itself. Let us then have the courage of freedom: let it replace suppression and terror. Let liberty become our faith and our deed and we shall grow strong therein.” [Alexander Berkman. What Is Communist Anarchism? New York: Vanguard Press, 1929. Page 262.]

“The intention of this text is to reply to those among the anarcho-communists who are engaged in the fight against ‘Islamophobia’ and who, for that reason, bar all criticism of Islam and endorse a theory of race as a social class, in an atmosphere of increasing tension, accusations of racism, and even actual physical attacks.

“The term ‘Islamophobia,’ which probably dates back to the early twentieth century, only recently came into widespread use to designate racism against ‘Arabs.’ This corresponded to a shift from racism against North Africans to terror or horror aroused by the Muslims’ religion. Immigrants and their descendants, formerly rejected for ‘ethnic’ reasons, are discriminated against today for their supposed adherence to an original culture identified with one of its dimensions—the Muslim religion—which many do not even practice, although some observe certain traditional customs.”

[Flora Grim and Alexandra Pinot-Noir. On the ideology of “anti-Islamophobia.” Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Page 1.]

“It was in the 19ᵗʰ Century, when capitalism was developing and the first great struggles of the working class were taking place – and to be more precise it was within the First International (1861-1871) – that a social doctrine appeared called ‘revolutionary socialism’ (as opposed to reformist or statist legalist socialism). This was also known as ‘anti-authoritarian socialism’ or ‘collectivism’ and then later as ‘anarchism,’ ‘anarchist communism’ or ‘libertarian communism.’

“This doctrine, or theory, appears as a creation of the organised socialist workers. It is in all events linked to there being a progressively sharpening class struggle. It is an historical product which originates from certain conditions of history, from the development of class societies – and not through the idealist critique of a few specific thinkers.…

“That anarchism originated in class struggles cannot be disputed.”

[Georges Fontenis. Manifesto of Libertarian Communism. London: Anarchist Communist Editions imprint of Anarchist Federation. 2009. Page 6.]

“[Errico] Malatesta was to address himself to the notion of ‘scientific anarchism’ as expressed by Kropotkin. He thought that this concept was neither science nor anarchism. Mechanical concepts of the universe could not be equated with human aspirations and the idea of anarchism. In addition Malatesta rejected Kropotkin’s views on harmony in nature, which he saw as too optimistic. This in its turn would create too much optimism about the inevitability of anarchist communism. Rather for Malatesta, it was not the emphasis on harmony in nature but the struggle against disharmony in human society. Despite this, it was Kropotkin’s linking of science and anarchism, with all of its faults, which won an audience throughout society and enabled anarchist communism to play a role in the working class movements as well as in intellectual life.” [Brian Morris. Basic Kropotkin: Kropotkin and the History of Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2008. Page 4.]

“For all his [Peter Kropotkin’s] association with the German-speaking anarchist communist party of Berne [Switzerland], he had still not been prepared to consider the question of anarchist communism at the Congress of the Jura Federation in 1878. Perhaps he still had reservations about the idea. Perhaps [James] Guillaume and [Adhémar] Schwitzguebel had warned him that the workers of the movement were not ready to accept it and, anxious to avoid a possibly divisive issue when his primary concern had been to foster popular revolutionary action, Kropotkin had refrained from joining Brousse in pressing the argument for anarchist communism. (Undoubtedly he regarded the main point of difference dividing the anarchists from the socialists as that of popular revolution.) Kropotkin’s almost obsessive preoccupation with action at this stage, however, meant that in general he had supported the dynamic Brousse in spite of all the tell-tale signs of gradualism and even reformism which had begun to appear in his speeches. The Congress finally ended with the ideological position still not clearly defined. Participants contented themselves with referring the issues of the destructivist vote and an exposition of anarchist collectivist and revolutionary socialism to the sections for further study, and simply declared for the principles of the collectivisation of all wealth and the abolition of the state, ‘for collective appropriation of social wealth, the abolition of the state in all its forms, including the would-be central office of public services.’” [Caroline Cahm. Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, 1872-1886. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1989. Page 49.]

“On the one hand, we want to live communism; on the other, to spread anarchy.” [Anonymous. Call. Lawrence Jarach, translator. Santa Cruz, California: Quiver Distro. 2009. Page 33.]

“Alongside the Russian Revolution, and his experiences in Western Europe, Kropotkin developed his analysis of revolution mainly in relation to movements in France, especially the Revolution of 1789 through 1793 and the Paris Commune of 1871. For Kropotkin, the free commune became the ends and means of genuine revolution. He detested representative government and those bureaucrats who sought to take upon themselves the responsibilities and rights of the people. More than once, he blasted those who would sit, like generals from afar, and give directives to movements in the streets …. One can only imagine what he would have to say about those who sit home today during demonstrations and tomorrow write ‘handbooks’ full of advice for activists. In his own day, he participated in armed demonstrations and thematized cowardice as necessary to overcome inside the movement ….” George Katsiaficas. Peter Kropotkin And Peoples’ Uprisings From the Paris Commune to the Kwangju Uprising. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2003. Page 2.]

“Maximalist anarchism encompasses those forms of anarchism which aim at the exponential exposure, challenging and abolition of power. Such a project involves a comprehensive questioning of the totality — the totality of power relations and the ensemble of control structures which embody those relations — or what, for shorthand purposes, I call the control complex. Power is not seen as located in any single institution such as patriarchy or the state, but as pervasive in everyday life. The focus of maximalism thus remains the dismantlement of the control complex, of the totality, of life structured by governance and coercion, of power itself in all its multiple forms.

“Given power’s pervasiveness and its capacity to insinuate itself into all manner of relations and situations (even the most intimate and apparently depoliticised), the maximalist stance involves a relentless interrogation of every aspect of daily life. Everything is open to question and challenge. Nothing is off limits for investigation and revision. Power, in all its overt and subtle forms, must be rooted out if life is to become free. Maximalism remains ruthlessly iconoclastic, not least when coming into contact with those icons that are vestiges of classical anarchism or earlier modes of radicalism (e.g., work, workerism, history) or those icons characteristic of contemporary anarchism (e.g., the primitive, community, desire and — above all — nature). Nothing is sacred, least of all the fetishised, reified shibboleths of anarchism. Maximalism entails a renewal and extension of the Nietzschean project of a transvaluation of all values in order to open possibilities for new ways of thought, perception, behaviour, action and ways of life, in short anarchist epistemologies and ontologies.

“In contrast, minimalist anarchism encompasses those forms of anarchism which have not made the post-Situationist quantum leap toward the maximalist positions outlined above. From the revolutionary perspective of maximalism, minimalist anarchism appears reformist, unable or unwilling to make the break with the control complex in its entirety, or inadequate to the project of freely creating life through the eradication of all forms of power, and thus doomed to failure. Maximalism remains radical in the etymological sense of getting to the root of problems, while minimalism remains prepared to accommodate itself to those forms of power it finds convenient or unwilling to confront. Minimalism remains stalled in the nostalgic politics of ‘if only…’, whereas maximalism proceeds to the anti-politics of the very science fictional question of ‘What if …?’”

[John Moore. Maximalist Anarchism/Anarchist Maximalism. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 2011. Pages 1-2.]

“Genesis is right: a genuinely new and lasting form is to be anticipated from a revolution that destroys the original principle of authority, solves, in a communistic way, the primeval problem of all economics, initiating overthrow from the inside and entrusting once again the care of mother and child to society as an economic unit.

“The upheaval, which will restore to economics its original motive and retun society to natural grouping, must be taken beyond the necessities of life, beyond the will to power – by a spirit that recognizes in freedom the empowerment of truly human relationships and grants each individual the highest good – still more in others’ freedom than in its own.

“The true liberation of women, the dissolving of the existing patriarchal family through the socialization of maternal care, re-establishes every individual’s vital interest in the society, which forthwith guarantees him the potential of highest freedom, of boundless freedom, and interests each individual from wherever he may come, to the same degree in the struggle against those institutions which now exist.

“The groundwork for such a revolution must effect the liberation of each individual from the principle of authority that he carries inside, from adaptation to the spirit of authoritarian institutions that has formed in him over the course of a childhood in the bosom of an authoritarian family – liberation from of the institutions the child has absorbed from those in his environment, which, to him and among ourselves, have stood for the eternal struggle for power and which remain enslaving, after such a childhood, for everyone, without exception; liberation from original sin itself, from the will to power.…

“… No really new creation, but merely, as the highest that can be attained, a full recognition of the complete error, primordially, in everything – a backward-reaching revaluing of all values, a will to the reconstruction of the primordial basis for relationships, society, and the development of culture which may then begin.

“What has been achieved over the whole long course of humanity up to now – were it to be abolished in the great struggle, we would accept the loss. The highest that the mind has been able to achieve up to now has been the realization of a single thing three thousand years ago – that all, all is error, a false development and a travesty and that the highest, the redeeming act will be the nullification of this entire development and all that exists through it. It is the inner fate and determination of the revolutionary, alone, if it must be so, knowing his own insular orientation, among enemies and allies alike, to the proclamation of his message from the future, to carry the revolutionary secret of redemption and to take on himself, if it may be so, responsibility for the overthrow of all that now exists and for the struggle and force released, perhaps against the will of an entire world.”

[Otto Gross. Selected Works: 1901-1920. Lois L. Madison, translator. Hamilton, New York: Mindpiece Publishing. 2012. Pages 279-280.]

“The psychology of the unconscious now reveals to us the area of hidden values which, preformed in human disposition but repressed from consciousness through the psychic pressure of education and all forms of authoritarianism, are being methodically restored to consciousness. These values enable us to produce an image of man closer to the original with his potentials, his innate characteristics and his primary determined-ness by means of his disposition itself, as opposed to the accepted norms and their effects. The psychology of the unconscious thereby offers us the first substratum for a questioning of the value of values—the starting point of revolutionary thinking. The demand for revolution as a result of the psychology of the unconscious becomes absolute as soon as it is demonstrated that the repression of these predisposed values means sacrificing the greatest human potential.

“For this reason the psychoanalytic school and its great founder Sigmund Freud stopped short, just before this became evident. No one on his own and alone on such far-advanced roads to knowledge is capable of breaking through the blockades that surround the value and validity of a principle which is so intimately bound up with one’s own personality. The limits of classical psychology are drawn just before the discoveries through which all traditional authority is called into question and which shake the basis of existence of those who feel safe and secure in the authority of the existing order. Thus, its important revelatory work ended with the disclosure of that level in the unconscious which covers the most deeply repressed psychic elements, the innate characteristics, and whose content can be empirically demonstrated to be a chaotic perversity of impulses and emotions. This hideousness of motives in the unconscious seemed to justify the existing authority principle, the oppression of the individual and the accepted norms. Consequently, in classical psychoanalysis psychotherapy could restrict itself to purposely controlling the negative character of the revealed impulses and to correct and suppress them according to the governing norms of the unconscious.”

[Otto Gross, “Protest and Morality in the Unconscious.” Ted Gundel, translator. New German Critique. Number 10, winter 1977. Pages 105-109.]

“More than others, one man embodied … [a] radical upheaval in his life and work: Otto Gross, physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and anarchist revolutionary. Although a catalyst at the centre of this cultural revolution, today he has almost become an unknown. This is the result of an analytic historiography provocatively called ‘Stalinist’ …: in the history of analysis, just as in Stalinist historiography, labels like ‘schizophrenic’ or ‘psychotic’ have been attached to so many of the most brilliant thinkers – [Alfred] Adler, [Carl] Jung, [Sándor] Ferenczi, [Otto] Rank, [Wilhelm] Reich, to name but a few – that such ‘diagnoses’ can almost be regarded as orders of merit: expressions of the analytic revolution devouring its children. Gross was among the first of these. A dissident, he was made a non-person and almost completely vanished from the record. Today, most analysts have never heard of him, and if they have, their knowledge is usually confined to that condemning label: ‘Isn’t that the one who became schizophrenic?’” [Gottfried M. Heuer. Freud’s ‘Outstanding’ Colleague/Jung’s ‘Twin Brother’: The suppressed psychoanalytic and political significance of Otto Gross. London and New York: Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa PLC business. 2017. Pages 18-19.]

“With his advocacy of sex, drugs and anarchy, [Otto] Gross became a spectre feared by the German-speaking bourgeoisie of Europe, a one-man threat to values of family and state. My hypothesis is that Gross has remained relatively unknown to this day because of this radical critique and, above all, because of the implications of his insistence that there is no individual change without collective change and vice versa. The tendency to romanticize Gross as a genius/madman of the analytic movement utterly depotentiates his serious message. Ernest Jones, who had met Gross in Munich [Germany] in 1908, where Gross introduced him to psychoanalysis, called him in his autobiography in the late forties ‘the nearest approach to the romantic ideal of a genius I have ever met’ …. But to focus on this aspect alone would mean overlooking Gross’ contribution to his field.” [Gottfried Heuer, “Jung’s twin brother. Otto Gross and Carl Gustav Jung: With an hitherto unpublished letter by C. G. Jung.” Journal of Analytical Psychology. Volume 46, issue 4, October 2001. Pages 655-688.]

“Although [Otto] Gross played a pivotal role in the birth of what today we are calling modernity, with wide-ranging influences in psychoanalysis, psychiatry, philosophy, radical politics, sociology, literature, and ethics, he has remained virtually unknown to this day. Already in 1921, less than a year after Gross’ death, the Austrian writer Anton Kuh wrote of him as, ‘a man known only to very few by name – apart from a handful of psychiatrists and secret policemen – and among those few only to those who plucked his feathers to adorn their own posteriors’ …. Today, still, most analysts have never heard of Otto Gross, or their knowledge is confined to, ‘Isn’t that the one who became schizophrenic?’ To a large extent this is the result of an analytic historiography which Erich Fromm has rightly called ‘Stalinistic’ …: dissidents become non-persons and vanish from the records. This practice of purging history makes the story of Otto Gross a secret one: it was hoped that we would never know.” [Gottfried Heuer, “The Devil Underneath the Couch: The Secret Story of Jung’s Twin Brother.” Libcom.org. May 3rd, 2012. Web. Retrieved on May 5th, 2017.]

“At the beginning of the 20ᵗʰ century, the psychoanalyst Otto Gross was a notorious figure in the anarchistic, bohemian milieu of Germany and his native Austria. His radical approach to both psychoanalytic therapy, which he took way further than Sigmund Freud himself, and the liberating use of drugs, brought him, together with his utopian ideas of radical ‘de-patriarcalization’ of society, in touch if not on collision course with many of the great personalities of that time – Freud, Carl Jung, Max Weber, Franz Kafka to name but some. His arrest and subsequent commitment to a mental hospital in 1913 led to a scandal in the press, due to the widespread but dubious notion that it happened as a result of a conspiracy, instigated by his detested father, the well-known professor of law, Hans Gross. The pseudo-genius Otto Gross was in a great many things a forerunner of the anti-authoritarian youth rebel of later times, and in a brief phase before World War I he obtained symbolic status in the ongoing culture war between fathers and sons, a war, which not least was nourished by the advent of that new liberation-ideology, psychoanalysis.…

“[Otto] Gross was a prophet of a new age – an age without fathers. And he was an early bird. He formulated a critique of society, and a utopian theory of the world after a revolution, directly from his relation to his father: Hans Gross, a strong and powerful personality with a great career in the legal and academic institutions of the Hapsburg Empire. Otto’s solution was to replace father-right with mother-right, where the children would belong to the mother. He saw his own psychoanalytic practice as a necessary and decisive contribution to this revolution – from his perspective a matriarchal revolution.”

[Henrik Jensen, “Revolting Against Father-Authority: the Case of Dr. Otto Gross.” Rebellion and resistance. Henrik Jensen, editor. Pisa, Italy: Pisa University Press. 2009. Pages 185-205.]

“After Acracia ceased publication in 1888, the campaign to eradicate sectarianism from the anarchist movement was taken up by several of the intellectuals associated with Antonio Pellicer’s circle. Their collective efforts led co the formal articulation of a viewpoint that came to be known as anarchismo sin adjetivos (anarchism without adjectives.) Considered by some historians to be Spain’s only real contribution to anarchist theory, anarchism without adjectives was actually more of a perspective or an attitude than a set of specific ideas. In its broadest sense, the phrase referred to an unhyphenated form of anarchism, that is, a doctrine without any qualifying labels such as communist, collectivist, mentalist, or individualist. For others, anarchismo sin adjetivos was simply understood as an attitude that tolerated the coexistence of different anarchist schools. The two Spanish theorists who were most responsible for developing this brand of anarchism were Fernando Tarrida del Marmol and Ricardo Mella. Because of the central role they played as expositors of anarchismo sin adjetivos. their major contributions to this tendency deserve close attention.” [George Richard Esenwein. Anarchist Ideology and the Working-class Movement in Spain, 1868-1898. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1989. Pages 134-135.]

“Men are of three sorts: the turn backs, the rush-aheads, and the indifferents. The first and the second are comparatively few in number. The really conscientious conservative, eternally looking backward for his models and trying hard to preserve that which is, is almost as scarce an article as the genuine radical, who is eternally attacking that which is and looking forward to some indistinct but glowing vision of a purified social life. Between them lies the vast nitrogenous body of the indifferents, who go through life with no large thoughts or intense feelings of any kind, the best that can be said of them being that they serve to dilute the too fierce activities of the other two. Into the callous ears of these indifferents, nevertheless, the opposing voices of conservative and radical are continually shouting; and for years, for centuries, the conservative wins the day, not because he really touches the consciences of the indifferent so much (though in a measure he does that) as because his way causes his hearer the least mental trouble. It is easier to this lazy, inert mentality to nod its head and approve the continuance of things as they are, than to listen to proposals for change, to consider, to question, to make an innovating decision. These require activity, application—and nothing is so foreign to the hibernating social conscience of your ordinary individual. I say ‘social’ conscience, because I by no means wish to say that these are conscienceless people; they have, for active use, sufficient conscience to go through their daily parts in life, and they think that is all that is required. Of the lives of others, of the effects of their attitude in cursing the existences of thousands whom they do not know, they have no conception; they sleep; and they hear the voices of those who cry aloud about these things, dimly, as in dreams; and they do not wish to awaken. Nevertheless, at the end of the centuries they always awaken. It is the radical who always wins at last. At the end of the centuries institutions are reviewed by this aroused social conscience, are revised, sometimes are utterly rooted out.” [Voltairine de Cleyre. Crime and Punishment. Boston, Massachusetts: Boston Anarchist Black Cross. 1903. Page 2.]

“Society is a quivering balance, eternally struck afresh, between these two. Those who look upon Man, as most Anarchists do, as a link in the chain of evolution, see in these two social tendencies the sum of the tendencies of individual men, which in common with the tendencies of all organic life are the result of the action and counter action of inheritance and adaptation. Inheritance, con tinually tending to repeat what has been, long, long after it is outgrown; adaptation continually tending to break down forms. The same tendencies under other names are observed in the inorganic world as well, and anyone who is possessed by the modern scientific mania for Monism can easily follow out the line to the vanishing point of human knowledge.

“There has been, in fact, a strong inclination to do this among a portion of the more educated Anarchists, who having been working men first and Anarchists by reason of their instinctive hatred to the boss, later became stu dents and, swept away by their undigested science, im mediately conceived that it was necessary to fit their Anarchism to the revelations of the microscope, else the theory might as well be given up. I remember with con siderable amusement a heated discussion some five or six years since, wherein doctors and embryo doctors sought for a justification of Anarchism in the develop ment of the amoeba, while a fledgling engineer searched for it in mathematical quantities.

“Myself at one time asserted very stoutly that no one could be an Anarchist and believe in God at the same time. Others assert as stoutly that one cannot accept the spiritualist philosophy and be an Anarchist.

“At present I hold with C. L. James, the most learned of American Anarchists, that one’s metaphysical system has very little to do with the matter. The chain of rea soning which once appeared so conclusive to me, namely, that Anarchism being a denial of authority over the individual could not co-exist with a belief in a Supreme Ruler of the universe, is contradicted in the case of Leo Tolstoy, who comes to the conclusion that none has a right to rule another just because of his belief in God, just because he believes that all are equal children of one father, and therefore none has a right to rule the other. I speak of him because he is a familiar and notable personage, but there have frequently been instances where the same idea has been worked out by a whole sect of believers, especially in the earlier (and persecuted) stages of their development.”

[Voltairine de Cleyre. Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Alexander Berkman, editor. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association. 1914. Pages 96-97.]

“Individualism supposes private property to be the cornerstone of personal freedom; asserts that such property should consist in the absolute possessicn of one’s own product and of such share of the natural heritage of all as one may actually use. Communist-Anarchism, on the other hand, declares that such property is both unrealizable and undesirable; that the common posses sion and use of all the natural sources and means of social production can alone guarantee the individual against a recurrence of inequality, and its attendants, government and slavery. My personal conviction is that both forms of society, as well as many intermediations, would, in the absence of government, be tried in various localities, according to the instincts and material condition of the people, but that well founded objections may be offered to both. Liberty and experiment alone can determine the best forms of society. Therefore I no longer label myself otherwise than as ‘Anarchist’ simply.” [Voltairine de Cleyre. Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Alexander Berkman, editor. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association. Page 158.]

“The first time I met her [Voltairine de Cleyre] — this most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced — was in Philadelphia, in August 1893. I had come to that city to address the unemployed during the great crisis of that year, and I was eager to visit Voltairine of whose exceptional ability as a lecturer I had heard while in New York. I found her ill in bed, her head packed in ice, her face drawn with pain. I learned that this experience repeated itself with Voltairine after her every public appearance: she would be bed-ridden for days, in constant agony from some disease of the nervous system which she had developed in early childhood and which continued to grow worse with the years. I did not remain long on this first visit, owing to the evident suffering of my hostess, though she was bravely trying to hide her pain from me. But fate plays strange pranks. In the evening of the same day, Voltairine de Cleyre was called upon to drag her frail, suffering body to a densely packed, stuffy hall, to speak in my stead. At the request of the New York authorities, the protectors of law and disorder in Philadelphia captured me as I was about to enter the Hall and led me off to the Police Station of the City of Brotherly Love.” [Emma Goldman. Voltairine de Cleyre. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1932. Page 3.]

“Like her companion Dyer D. Lum, [Voltairine] de Cleyre favored the idea of anarchism without adjectives. Initially an individualist anarchist and supporter of the ideas reflected in Benjamin Tucker’s paper, Liberty, she stayed constant to the paper’s initial Proudhonist mutualism while gradually recognizing class as more and more of an important aspect of her anarchism. Although she never adopted anarchist communism, de Cleyre was influenced in the idea of a unifying anarchism by Lum as well as the Spanish anarchists, Ricardo Mella and Fernando Tarrida del Marmol, whom she met in London in 1897. As she wrote to Emma Goldman in 1907, ‘I am an Anarchist Simply without economic labels attached.’ … This view of anarchism considerably affected de Cleyre’s writing on anarchism. Her essays reflect a struggle with language, a tension if you will, centered on finding the right word for the right feeling, the right action. Very rarely does she use hyperbolic rhetoric. Her essays are precise explorations meant to clarify, guide or interrogate.” [Barry Pateman, “Preface.” Voltairine de Cleyre. The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader. A. J. Brigati, editor. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2004. Pages i-iii.]

“Voltairine’s [Voltairine de Cleyre’s] political-economic stance within the anarchist spectrum was no less complicated than her other views and even less well understood. [Paul] Avrich dispels the myth created by erroneous claims of Rudolph Rocker and Emma Goldman that Voltairine became a communist anarchist. In 1907, points out Avrich, Voltairine replied to Emma’s claim, saying, ‘I am not now and never have been at any time a Communist.’ Beginning as a Tuckerite individualist, Voltairine turned in the 1890s to the mutualism of Dyer Lum. But she eventually grew to the conclusion that neither individualism nor collectivism nor even mutualism was entirely satisfactory. ‘I am an Anarchist, simply, without economic labels attached,’ she was finally to declare.” [Candace Falk, “Foreward.” Voltairine de Cleyre. Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre—Feminist, Anarchist, Genius. Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell, editors. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. 2005. Pages ix-xi.]

“‘I am an Anarchist, simply, without economic labels attached,’ she [Voltairine de Cleyre] corrected [Emma] Goldman …. In general her economic vision was based on a confidence that true freedom would produce forms of society we have yet to imagine. In the meantime, the task of anarchists was not to dissipate their unity in debates over the merits of this or that system but to agitate for the conditions of liberty that would be germinal for a new order: most fun damentally, the abolition of government and the establishment of ‘world wide freedom to use all natural sources’; ‘the restoration and the perpetual indivisibility of the earth and the great stores within her bosom’ ….” [Eugenia DeLamotte, “Refashioning the Mind: The Revolutionary Rhetoric of Voltairine de Cleyre.” Legacy. Volume 20, number 1/2, 2003. Pages 153-174.]

“In America ‘Anarchism Without Adjectives’ arose against the background of a rancorous dispute between largely native-born individualist anarchists and the communist anarchists (of whom a major portion were foreign-born).…

“… [Certain] anarchists without adjectives … took a general approach that’s since been shared by a number of other thinkers. They include the people … I’ve done earlier studies on – James Scott, Elinor Ostrom, David Graeber and Colin Ward – as well as Pyotr [Peter] Kropotkin, Paul Goodman and others. What they share is a faith in the capacity of ordinary human beings to work out cooperative arrangements for themselves, and a regard for the various examples of such arrangements throughout history in all their variety and particularity, that transcends cut-and-dried ideological labels. Even when they come from or continue to identify with some sectarian version of anarchism …, their love for specific examples of human ingenuity and achievement comes before their label. All of them take the approach of starting from ‘anarchy in action’ …: looking at what people have actually done, meeting face-to-face as equals to work out solutions to common problems, without worrying about what label – market, syndicalist, communist – to assign it.”

[Kevin A. Carson, “Anarchists Without Adjectives: The Origins of a Movement.” Paper number 21, Winter 2016. Center for a Stateless Society. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Pages 1-31.]

“… the theoretical perspective known as ‘anarquismo sin adjetives’ (‘anarchism without adjectives’) was one of the by-products of a intense debate within the movement itself. The roots of the argument can be found in the development of Communist Anarchism after Bakunin’s death in 1876. While not entirely dissimilar to Collectivist Anarchism (as can be seen from James Guillaume’s famous work ‘On Building the New Social Order’ within Bakunin on Anarchism, the collectivists did see their economic system evolving into free communism), Communist Anarchists developed, deepened and enriched Bakunin’s work just as Bakunin had developed, deepened and enriched Proudhon’s. Communist Anarchism was associated with such anarchists as Elisee Reclus, Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta and (most famously) Peter Kropotkin.” [Iain McKay, Gary Elkin, Dave Neal, and Ed Boraas. An Anarchist FAQ. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 104.]

“Once upon a time there was an anarchist call for ‘Anarchism without Adjectives,’ referring to a doctrine that tolerated the co-existence of different schools of anarchist thought. Instead of qualifying Anarchism as collectivist, communist, or individualist, Anarchism without Adjectives refused to preconceive economic solutions to a post-revolutionary time. Instead, Anarchism without Adjectives argued that the abolition of authority, not squabbling over the future, is of primary importance.…

“If anarchy does not have a road map then we (as anarchists) are free to work together. Our projects might not be of the same scale as the general strike, or even the halting of business-as-usual in a major metropolitan area, but they would be anarchist projects. An anarchy without road map or adjectives could be one where the context of the decisions that we make together will be of our own creation rather than imposed upon us. It could be an anarchy of now rather than the hope of another day. It would place the burden of establishing trust on those who actually have a common political goal (the abolition of the state and capitalism) rather than on those who have no goal at all or whose goal is antithetical to an anarchist one.”

[Aragorn! Anarchy Without Road Maps or Adjectives. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Pages 1-2.]

“It is easy to be cagey about politics but for a moment let us imagine a possibility. Not to tell one another what to do, or about an answer to every question that could arise, but to take a break from hesitation. Let us imagine what an indigenous anarchism could look like.…

“An indigenous anarchism is an anarchism of place. This would seem impossible in a world that has taken upon itself the task of placing us nowhere. A world that places us nowhere universally. Even where we are born, live, and die is not our home. An anarchism of place could look like living in one area for all of your life. It could look like living only in areas that are heavily wooded, that are near life-sustaining bodies of water, or in dry places. It could look like traveling through these areas. It could look like traveling every year as conditions, or desire, dictated. It could look like many things from the outside, but it would be choice dictated by the subjective experience of those living in place and not the exigency of economic or political priorities. Location is the differentiation that is crushed by the mortar of urbanization and pestle of mass culture into the paste of modern alienation.”

[Aragorn! Locating An Indigenous Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Pages 3 and 5.]

“Ego-anarchism has nothing to do with the historical contraposition between anarcho-individualism and socialist-anarchism, nor does it dwell on methods of organization or not organization. For the moment it does not even want to analyze the many conditions that allowed the birth of all these trends. On the contrary it wants to take advantage of all these distinctions in order to re-launch the extreme variety of possible and certainly desirable situations.

“Ego-anarchism represents the overcoming of these distinctions as their assumptions themselves have been overcome. Moreover, the identification of the overcoming of these assumptions allows the elimination of any instance of ridraft of the historical dynamics at the origin of the birth of the anarchist movement, the socialist one and the individualist one.…

“Revolt is opposed to Revolution because the latter is the ‘reform’ of an old order that leaves the condition of dependence and subjugation of the Individual intact.”

[Anonymous. Ego-Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 1.]

“Open-source organization is ideal for the design of industrial products, because digital design can be done stigmergically (the same modular, granular approach to leveraging small contributions that characterizes Wikipedia) by self-selected individuals designing components to plug into a larger platform ecology. Physical production, on the other hand, is a cooperative venture that requires at least some degree of administrative coordination by a number of people engaged in a common process. Members of an open-manufacturing ecology can’t just manufacture components and sub-assemblies when they feel like it, and let them lie around until other groups of people also feel like producing the remaining necessary parts and assembling the final product. In the meantime, the shelves at Sears and Walmart are being stocked with goods — of inferior design and higher price though they may be — that are made to order in a timely fashion.” [Kevin Carson. 2017 and “Killer Apps” for the Transition2017 and “Killer Apps” for the Transition. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 1.]

“… My purpose throughout this section is to project the main points of Proudhon’s politics so the reader can identify the general character and particularities of the New Proudhonism in our era.…

“… I suggest that contemporary versions of [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon’s political thought – the New Proudhonism – are present in numerous responses to the current, deepening crisis of U.S. capitalism.…

“… Here in the United States, arguably the most vulnerable of contemporary capitalism’s multiple cores, we should grasp the relevance of [Karl] Marx’s differences with Proudhon more than a century and a half ago. For Proudhonism and Marxism alike, the common denominator then and now is capitalist crisis and whether their respective resolutions offer coherent and viable alternatives. Accordingly, we should make Marx’s implicit conception of progress explicit in the service of current efforts aimed at revolutionary-socialist transformation, especially in order to critique and combat variations of the New Proudhonism.”

[Michael Joseph Roberto, “Crisis, Revolution, and the Meaning of Progress: The Poverty of Philosophy and its Contemporary Relevance.” Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice. 2009. Pages 1-49.]

“Protest: to vindicate and practice the freedom to get naked is, indeed, to protest any dogma, law, or custom that establishes a hierarchy of body parts, that considers, for example, that showing the face, hands, arms, or throat is more decent, more moral, more respectable than exposing the buttocks, breasts, belly, or the pubic area. It is to protest against the classification of different body parts into noble and ignoble categories: the nose being considered noble and the penis ignoble, for example. More importantly, it is to protest against any intervention (of a legal or other nature) that obligates us to wear clothes because it pleases another — whereas it has never occurred to us to object that they do not get undressed, if that is what they prefer.” [Émile Armand. Revolutionary Nudism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1934. Page 1.]

“I think that a highly original, politically radical, and if not revolutionary, then at least robustly State-resistant, State-subversive, and even outright civilly-disobedient cosmopolitan, existentialist version of anarchism that I call existential Kantian cosmopolitan anarchism, very naturally flows from [Immanuel] Kant’s moral philosophy, his philosophy of religion, and his political anthropology. Roughly, the idea is that if we take Kant’s famous injunction to have the courage to use your own understanding, and apply this morally courageous act not merely to ‘the public use of reason’ (that is, to intellectual activity, writing, and speech or self-expression in the broad sense of ‘free speech’), but also to our individual choices, our individual agency, our shared social life, and especially to what Kant quite misleadingly calls ‘the private use of reason’ (that is, to our social lives as functional role-players, or functionaries, within the State, including, e. g., citizenship or public office), then the result is existential Kantian cosmopolitan anarchism.” [Robert Hanna, “Radical Enlightenment: Existential Kantian Cosmopolitan Anarchism, With a Concluding Quasi-Federalist Postscript.” Join, or Die — Philosophical Foundations of Federalism. Dietmar H. Heidemann and Katja Stoppenbrink, editors. Berlin, Germany, and Boston, Massachusetts: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 2016. Pages 59-88.]

“Horizontalidad is a word that has come to embody the new social arrangements and principles of organization of these movements in Argentina. As its name suggests, horizontalidad implies democratic communication on a level plane and involves—or at least intentionally strives towards-non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian creation rather than reaction. It is a break The banging of a pot in protest. with vertical ways of organizing and relating.

“Horizontalidad is a living word that reflects an ever-changing experience. Months after the popular rebellion in December of 2001, many movement participants began speaking of their relationships as horizontal in order to describe the new forms of decision-making. Years after the rebellion, those continuing to build new movements speak of horizontalidad as a goal, as well as a tool.

“… Simply desiring egalitarian relationships does not make them so. But the process of horizontalidad is also a tool to achieve this goal. Thus horizontalidad is desired and is a goal, but it is also the means—the tool—for achieving this end.”

[Marina Sitrin. Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2006. Pages 3-4.]

“… the change that has occurred … in Argentina, is most fundamentally a change in individuals’ subjectivity and, as is often said, their ‘protagonism.’ This is a change that cannot be taken away. It is a sense of identity, dignity and power, grounded in the collective. It is a break from old hierarchical ways of organizing and toward a new horizontalism.” [Marina Sitrin, “Horizontalidad en/in Argentina.” Privately published paper. September, 2003. Pages 1-39.]

“The Occupy movements throughout the United States, Spain, and Greece all have sought to use direct democracy to create horizontal, nonhierarchical social relationships that would allow participants to openly engage with each other. The term ‘horizontalism,’ from the Spanish horizontalidad, was first used in Argentina after the 2001 popular rebellion there.” [Marina Sitrin, “Horizontalism and the Occupy Movements.” Dissent. Online magazine. Spring, 2012.]

“The use of ‘horizontalidad,’ horizontality, and horizontalism, first put forth in Argentina by the autonomous movements in the wake of the 2001 crisis, has become widespread to describe the new social relationships developing around the globe. Horizontalism and horizontal are words that encapsulate the relationships on which many of the new global movements are grounded—from those in Spain and Greece to the Occupy movement in the United States.

“Horizontalidad is a social relationship that implies, as its name suggests, a flat plane on which to communicate. Horizontalidad necessarily implies the use of direct democracy and a striving for consensus, processes in which attempts are made to ensure that everyone is heard and new relationships are created.”

[Marina Sitrin, “Goals without Demands: The New Movements for Real Democracy.” The South Atlantic Quarterly. Volume 113, number 2, spring 2014. Pages 245-258.]

“… we believe that those doing the work should make the decisions in these [anti-war] organizations. We recommend the model of assemblies, spokescouncils, or other horizontal networks of small, decentralized groups that are unified around an anti-authoritarian vision of social change. This will ensure that those at the base hold decision-making power and thus that the mobilization reflects the political consciousness of the base, which is typically more radical and sane than that held by the leadership. It will still be possible for sectarian groups to infiltrate the base, but much harder for them to seize control. We believe that instituting such a decentralized structure is consistent with a principled commitment to democracy and should be our first act of defense against the party-building backs and the omnipresent ‘leadership.’” [Marina Sitrin and Chuck Morse, “An Anti-Authoritarian Response to the War Efforts.” Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought. Volume 30, winter 2003. Pages 6-7.]

“The once prevalent conviction that a handful of centripetal values could bind society together has transformed into a deeply skeptical attitude toward general statements of value. If it is, indeed, turtles all the way down, then decisions can take place only on a local scale and on a horizontal plane. There is no overarching platform from which to legislate; only a ‘local knowledge.’ …

“Occupy Wall Street has come to represent the latest turn in this movement toward local and more horizontal spaces of freedom. Occupation was, itself, a matter of recovering local space: a way to repoliticize the square.…

“… Marina Sitrin, … [a] prominent Occupier [participant in the Occupy Movement], has offered another name for this politics—‘horizontalism’: ‘the use of direct democracy, the striving for consensus’ and ‘processes in which everyone is heard and new relationships are created.’ It is a politics that not only refuses institutionalization but also imagines a new subjectivity from which one can project the future into the present.…

“It can be argued that horizontalism is, in many ways, a product of the growing disaggregation and individuation of Western society; that it is a kind of free-market leftism: a politics jury-rigged out of the very culture it hopes to resist.”

[David Marcus, “The Horizontalists.” Dissent. Online magazine. Fall, 2012.]

“Occupations depend on bodies filling space. But they also involve communication, in at least two aspects – horizontalist general-assembly decision-making and networked social media: the very slow and the very fast.…

“Entangled with the net-wide media of Occupy [the Occupy Movement] is … [an] occult communications story: that of the interface between anarchist horizontalists in the square and the vertical bureaucratized US labour movement – sclerotic, fractured, defeated, yet not extinct – and with some emergent sectors touched by the same dynamics as Occupy itself.”

[Nick Dyer-Witheford, “Net, square, everywhere?” Radical Philosophy: Philosophical Journal of the Independent Left. Number 171, January/February 2012. Pages 2-7.]

“… Podemos [a Spanish left-wing party] broke with Spanish norms and the horizontalism of the indignados [Indigenous peoples] to use Pablo Iglesias’s face as its symbol on ballot papers.” [Susan Watkins, “Oppositions.” New Left Review. Series II, number 98, March–April 2016. Pages 5-30.]

“… Podemos’s círculos [circles] … [are] the party’s political organs for revitalizing democracy and instituting a more horizontalist approach to policy decision-making.” [Bécquer Seguín, “Podemos and its critics.” Radical Philosophy: Philosophical Journal of the Independent Left. Number 193, September/October 2015. Pages 20-32.]

“If consensus and horizontalism are not to remain stuck in nursing such quasi-neoliberal egos, then we must be able to delineate how they can contribute towards a more substantive notion of radical politics – one which also involves a verticalism. Perhaps this would be a better way of reviving a communist politics instead of taking politically correct vows of horizontalism and consensus.” [Saroj Giri, “Communism, occupy and the question of form.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 13, number 3, August 2013. Pages 577-601.]

“… [There are] four types of cultural orientation: horizontal individualism, vertical individualism, horizontal collectivism, and vertical collectivism. Horizontal individualism refers to the tendency to be self-reliant, unique, and distinctive from groups, and to see the individual as being equal to all others. Vertical individualism is characterized as the tendency to want to be distinguished from others and move up in the hierarchy as a result of competition with others. Horizontal collectivism refers to the tendency to see oneself as being equal to others and to highlight common goals, interdependence, and sociability. Finally, vertical collectivism is the tendency to stress loyalty to one’s group and adherence to hierarchical relationships with others, both of which lead to a willingness to sacrifice individual goals for the goal of a group and to submit to authority” [Heungsik Park, John Blenkinsopp, M. Kemal Oktem, and Ugur Omurgonulsen, “Cultural Orientation and Attitudes toward Different Forms of Whistleblowing: A Comparison of South Korea, Turkey, and the U.K.” Journal of Business Ethics. Volume 82, number 4, November 2008. Pages 929-939.]

“… one perceives and knows according to where one is, and what impedes or enhances one’s range. This is not just to say that Occupy managed to generate a broad, indistinct but clear perception of its own force by gradually gaining self-perception by way of social media, but also that within each Occupy site there were moments of relative distinction where divergent demands of racial, ethnic, sexual and gendered justice came into relative conflict. It was occupation, or the assembling together of bodies, that generated multiple lines of resistance – both resistance to Occupy’s outside – the 1% – and within Occupy.” [Claire Colebrook, “Resistance to Occupy.” Occupy: A People Yet to Come. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Open Humanities Press imprint of imprint of Michigan Publishing. 2015. Pages 125-157.]

“… on December 4, 2011, members of Occupy Oakland’s People of Color caucus put forward a motion encouraging participants in that city’s General Assembly to consider dropping ‘Occupy’ and adopting ‘Decolonize’ as their watchword.…

“The call to ‘decolonize’ the Occupy movement was motivated by the sincere hope that America’s history of violent conquest might finally, mercifully, be undone. But while there’s no reason to suspect the motivations that compelled people to call for an end to the indiscriminate use of the term ‘occupation,’ this should not lead us to conclude that the analytic basis of their exhortation should likewise be beyond scrutiny.”

[AK Thompson, “‘Occupation’ Between Conquest and Liberation.” Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination. Volume 6, number 1 and 2, 2016. Pages 213-227.]

“… [This] tenet is from Situationist practice: the worker’s council. This too may seem a bit archaic. While I think of myself as a worker, not everyone does. The idea of the General Assembly revives the structural principles of the councilist tradition and mixes it with some others, learned along the way. The Situationists were ‘horizontalists’ before there was such a term. This surprises people who know only [Guy] Debord’s self-constructed glamor and not the actual practice of the Situationist International and other groups with which it bears a family resemblance.” [McKenzie Wark, “This Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit.” Theory & Event. Volume 14, number 4, 2011. No pagination.]

“Occupy has drawn inspiration from many of 2011’s insurrectionary episodes, including Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Spain’s indignatos, and Puerto Rico’s student strikes. Also important has been Latin America’s horizontalism and zapatismo. But, the most immediate inspiration for Occupy is anarchism. This should surprise only the oblivious: many activists have noticed that American youth are influenced by anarchism more than by Marxism. The first manifestation of this influence is the emphasis upon anti-authoritarianism.” [Dana Williams, “The Anarchist DNA of Occupy.” Contexts. Volume 11, number 2, spring 2012. Pages 19-20.]

“The guiding ontology of the movements thus established through a genealogy of their practices, the second and third portions of this article seek to evaluate the strategic opportunities available to the horizontal left from the perspective of two literatures, those of anarchism and autonomist Marxism. Addressing the strategic logic of the recent movements, the second section adopts an autonomist Marxist perspective in order to evaluate prefigurative strategy in the context of late-capitalist power. To be viable, the autonomists argue, a strategy of confronting contemporary capitalism must necessarily start with the recognition that it has stepped ‘outside the factory,’ so to speak, subsuming skills and capacities of production, heretofore considered part of the ‘life world,’ and aligning social desires with capitalist rationality to an unprecedented extent. By their rhetoric and their actions, the movements demonstrate a certain awareness of this change, and its implications for their struggle.” [Nicholas Kiersey and Wanda Vrasti, “A convergent genealogy?: Space, time and the promise of horizontal politics today.” Capital & Class. Volume 40, number 1, 2016. Pages 75-94.]

“Denounced as class war by the Right (more accurately than the liberals, who hoped it would be the Democratic Party’s Tea Party), Occupiers openly advocated that war as a necessary response to the one being waged against the 99%. We don’t know what contribution Occupiers will make if they can divest themselves of horizontalist illusions; however, although the answers given by OWS [Occupy Wall Street] anarchists may have proved inadequate, the questions they raised about personal freedom, participatory democracy, the coordination of diverse struggles, the dangers of hierarchy, unaccountable leadership, excessive centralism and the relation of reform and revolution, as well as those about the kind of democracy possible in a future socialism, present challenges we will have to deal with.” [Jackie Desalvo, “Occupy Wall Street: Creating a Strategy for a Spontaneous Movement.” Science & Society. Volume 79, number 2, April 2015. Pages 264-287.]

“The present research aims to understand why sustaining a social movement (that challenges the status quo) can be so difficult and will shed light on the cognitive mechanisms that could explain movements’ declining protest activities. The Occupy Movement is an ideal example to address this question as it had gained considerable momentum by late 2011, but by early 2012, waning support for the movement was apparent. Grievances by Occupy were mainly aimed at the financial sector, which was their reason for occupying space close to prominent financial areas. Therefore, bankers were a suitable comparison group for this study because Occupy was in a symbolic conflict with this profession due to its dominant economic position in the capitalistic system. More specifically, the present study aims to understand if there are fundamental cognitive attitudinal differences between those who are seeking a more egalitarian economic system (Occupy protesters) and those who are not (bankers).” [Brian O’Shea, “Capitalism Versus a New Economic Model: Implicit and Explicit Attitudes of Protesters and Bankers.” Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest. Volume 14, issue 3, 2015. Pages 311-330.]

“… society is now organized vertically, in a hierarchy of power, privilege, prosperity, and health, which is structured in almost the same demographic pyramid as feudalism, or even the ancient warrior-priest command states. Anarchism suggests that the great majority of us would be far better off in a horizontal arrangement, an association of equals. Such a horizontality in the realm of power used to be derided as hopelessly naïve and unrealistic, but the more we learn about our human past and our primate ancestors, the more it becomes clear that this was the norm during the entirety of our evolution; only since the invention of agriculture, patriarchy, and the warrior-priest power structure has verticality ruled our lives. Getting back to a horizontal structure would be a return to the species norm and collective sanity, and to a sense of justice that long predates humanity itself, as can be seen clearly in the actions of our primate cousins.

“From vertical to horizontal, then; but this is the work of democracy too, and even the work of history itself, if progress in human welfare is what we judge history by. So the more we succeed in this long work, the closer we come to the goals of anarchism, and the goals of other utopian endeavors: democracy, science, justice.

“In the meantime, we have to constantly work; resist capitalism; interrogate our own actions; and speak out against the current order, for something better. That’s what these writers have been doing in their lives and their work, and so this book too becomes part of that project. It’s been going on for a very long time, and will presumably continue past our moment; but our destruction of the biosphere has moved the whole process into crisis mode, and we won’t be leaving that mode until the crisis is resolved. So to a certain extent, we can no longer take the long view. We have to avert a biophysical catastrophe if we want to give our children a healthy planet and civilization. In this moment of the storm, all our political ideas need to be reconsidered, even the most radical ones, or especially the most radical ones. And all those based on a hopeful view of humanity, and those that help us to construct a utopian project for us to fulfill as soon as possible, deserve to be brought into the discussion. So: read on, and imagine a horizontal world, a free association of six billion equals.”

[Kim Stanley Robinson, “Introduction.” Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction. Margaret Killjoy, editor. Oakland, California, and Edinburgh, Scotland: AK Press. 2009. Pages 1-5.]

“Occupy Wall Street can be characterized as anarchist, but in a very complicated sense. The movement quickly attracted the whole spectrum of the left, from liberal Democrats to revolutionary communists, and a few right-wing libertarians. There were many who had anarchistic ideas, but they did not necessarily call themselves anarchists. Some rejected all political labels; others thought ‘anarchist’ implied political positions that they rejected. And the movement had no central authority to dictate any political line.

“Still it was anarchist in spirit and sensibility; anarchists (whether declared or not) set the tone. This anarchism consisted far less in concrete aspirations to a future society free of coercion, or in any political strategy, than in everyday organization and interpersonal relations. It claimed to be leaderless, governed by consensus, and it attempted to meet the needs of occupiers internally and cooperatively.”

[John L. Hammond, “The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street.” Science & Society. Volume 79, number 2, April 2015. Pages 288-313.]

“The ‘mortgage meltdown’ of ‘toxic assets’ which knocked the globally networked financial system off its pins had widespread devastating consequences for poor and working people. Shantytowns sprang up across the U.S. of jobless former homeowners. Informal and orchestrated defenses against the wave of foreclosure and evictions were occurring nationwide, supported by new grassroots community organizations. The ideas of squatting and occupation were often discussed as political strategies in the U.S., and a number of artists were working with affected people and activist groups on these issues.” [Alan W. Moore. Occupation Culture: Art & Squatting in the City from Below. Creative Commons. Brooklyn, New York: Minor Compositions imprint of Autonomedia. 2015. Page 50.]

“Contemporary anarchism is a highly literate self-educating culture. Book fairs are but one of the ways this culture is expressed, and they are key nodes in the international anarchist movement. They take place annually in cities around the world. The one in New York is relatively new, and has regularly included an art show, usually a performance festival, and a film screening series. Unlike social centers, which may be primarily oriented to cultural activities, anarchist book fairs concentrate on political information and education. The book fairs are rendezvous for writers, publishers and activists who travel the circuit. They regularly feature meeting sessions and workshops, discussions of pressing questions and sharing of skills. These sessions, like much of the material on publishers’ tables, often make links with, anarchist movements of the past. I heard an aged veteran of the international brigades of the Spanish Civil War speak in New York at one of these. He had been recruited in Paris as a teen, and was full of energy and unbowed idealism as he told of his experiences.” [Alan W. Moore. Occupation Culture: Art & Squatting in the City from Below. Creative Commons. Brooklyn, New York: Minor Compositions imprint of Autonomedia. 2015. Page 95.]

“In fact, bankers are allowed to make money out of thin air—but only if they lend it to someone. That’s the real reason everyone is in debt: it’s a shakedown system. The financial establishment colludes with the government to create rules designed to put everyone in debt; then the system extracts it from you. Overseas it operates through financial scams that keep cheap goods flowing into the United States in a way that would never be possible if not for the threat of U.S. military power.

“Here at home it means endlessly making up new rules designed to put us all in debt, with the entire apparatus of government, police and prisons providing enforcement and surveillance. Instead of taxing the rich to generate money to build and maintain things like schools and roads, our government actually borrows money from the banks and the public pays the interest on these loans. As we’ve learned through scandal after scandal, this process is riddled with fraud, rigged from the start to steal money that should be going to social necessities. Financial capitalism is mafia capitalism.

“We gave the banks the power to create money because they promised to use it to help us live healthier and more prosperous lives?not to turn us into frightened peons. They broke that promise. We are under no moral obligation to keep our promises to liars and thieves. In fact, we are morally obligated to find a way to stop this system rather than continuing to perpetuate it.”

[Strike Debt/Occupy Wall Street. The Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual. Vancouver, British Columbia: Adbusters. 2012. Creative Commons. Pages 1-2.]

“This special section contributes to this process of contextualisation by studying developments in, obstacles to, and prospects for, a more deliberative and participatory democracy in the UK. The UK has a distinct political culture and political system, which generates both opportunities and barriers to the institutionalisation of deliberative and participatory processes. Although these opportunities and barriers are not always exclusive to the UK, they nonetheless manifest themselves in distinct ways and must therefore be considered in a specific UK context. For example, the combination of a devolved political system within aWestminster model is distinct to the UK. It is therefore vital that we take note of these contextual factors, which include a devolved and multi-level political system, distinct modes of path dependency and the particular cultural characteristics of the citizenry.” [Stewart Davidson and Stephen Elstub, “Deliberative and Participatory Democracy in the UK.” BJPIR: The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. Volume 16, number 3, August 2014. Pages 367-385.]

“Since the 1970s participatory democracy has been a catchword for genuine, popular or progressive democratization. Since then the general climate has changed in several respects. The Enlightenment confidence in large-scale social engineering is past and, in addition, wholesale ideology has lost appeal. Arguably, limitations of ‘participatory democracy’ as previously or conventionally conceived are the following.” [Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “Participatory democratization reconceived.” Futures. Volume 32, number 5, June 2001. Pages 407-422.]

“Populist mobilization and participatory democracy make strange bedfellows. The two processes seem simultaneously quite similar yet radically distinct. Both are forms of political participation that privilege regular people (i.e. non-elites). But populist mobilization is often associated with personalistic control over decision-making, electoral instrumentalism, politically discretionary resource distribution, and state control over society. Participatory democracy, by contrast, is frequently associated with popular control over deliberative decision-making, politically universalistic resource distribution, and social control of the state. Few places exemplify the tensions between populist mobilization and participatory democracy as well as [Hugo] Chávez-era Venezuela.” [Gabriel Hetland, “The Crooked Line: From Populist Mobilization to Participatory Democracy in Chávez-Era Venezuela.” Qualitative Sociology. Volume 37, number 4, December 2014. Pages 373-401.]

“… what are the potential pathologies of participatory democracy? Civil society participation promises the building of the general will from the ‘bottom up.’ However, we should be aware that under the appearance of widespread participation, we might find the manufacturing of participation or what is generally labelled ‘participatory engineering.’ Political interference in fixing the presumed accountability issues of CSOs [civil society organizations] in terms of managerial principles and neo-plural forms of interest intermediation might result in the domination of bureaucratic and neoliberal rationalities within the CSOs. Thus conceived, the legal norms of participation and current consultation practices might in fact be defining and prescribing the boundaries of a legitimate civil society in a de-politicised way. If that were so, the result would be to restrict, exclude and de-legitimise other groups in civil society.” [Acar Kutay, “Limits of Participatory Democracy in European Governance.” European Law Journal. Volume 21, number 6, November 2015. Pages 803-818.]

“Participatory democracy is a process of collective decision making that combines elements from both direct and representative democracy: Citizens have the power to decide on policy proposals and politicians assume the role of policy implementation. The electorate can monitor politicians’ performance simply by comparing citizens’ proposals with the policies actually implemented. As a result, the discretion of politicians is severely constrained. In this system, the extent to which citizens can affect policy and determine social priorities is directly aligned with the degree to which they choose to involve themselves in the process.” [Enriqueta Aragonès and Santiago Sánchez-Pagés, “A theory of participatory democracy based on the real case of Porto Alegre.” European Economic Review. Volume 53, number 1, January 2009. Pages 56-72.]

“Participatory democracy as a viable political practice independent of the state has seldom been a serious object of scholarly attention.” [Amory Starr, María Elena Martínez-Torres, and Peter Rosset, “Participatory Democracy in Action: Practices of the Zapatistas and the Movimento Sem Terra.” Latin American Perspectives. Volume 38, number 1, January 2011. Pages 102-119.]

“Participatory democracy was introduced to promote a strong democracy grounded on the interactions between all actors (elected and nonelected) who were affected by a public decision …. However, as only a weak(ened) version of participatory democracy tends to become manifest in practice, there are “serious concerns about an emerging gap between the rhetoric of hoped-for or taken-for-granted benefits and their materialisation in reality” …. Participatory democracy may have become the standard for public problem solving; making it work in practice continues to be exceedingly difficult.” [Koen P. R. Bartels, “Communicative Capacity: The Added Value of Public Encounters for Participatory Democracy.” American Review of Public Administration. Volume 44, number 6, November 2014. Pages 656-674.]

“Efforts to create “smart communities” using Internet-based technology are just beginning to emerge, and important problems like the “digital divide” will present serious impediments to large-scale use of the opportunities technology provides for enhancing participatory democracy. Technology may also pose problems for citizen privacy and security as more and more information is collected and stored on computers. At the same time, the rapid development of information technologies such as the Internet may open new doors to direct, participatory democracy that just a few short years ago were not even known to exist.” [Timothy D. Sisk. Democracy at the Local Level: The International IDEA Handbook on Participation, Representation, Conflict Management, and Governance. Stockholm, Sweden: The International IDEA Handbook Series imprint of International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). 2001. Page 180.]

“Since its launch, Otakantaa.fi [Finnish–language website] has attracted approximately 6,000 unique visitors a month. The services aim to increase citizens’ levels of competence in participation and, consequently, their empowerment towards active citizenship. The services support participatory democracy and increase interaction between the government and civil society. They also aim to improve the quality of decision-making and the drafting of legislation and introduce citizens’ everyday knowledge to complement expert information on these processes.” [Kristina Reinsalu. Handbook on E-democracy. Tampere, Finland: Tampereen Yliopistopaino Oy Juvenes Print. 2010. Page 34.]

“Participatory governance is the most important component of participatory democracy. It implies engagement of population at large in the issues of community governance. In the first instance, participatory governance prioritises engagement of people in customised governance issues, which are left out of traditional regulation processes. This means introduction and establishment of systems, which would promote direct involvement of those citizens, which for a number of reasons suffer complications in participation. In particular, these people are particularly in socially vulnerable groups, representatives of national minorities and women.” [David Tumanyan and Vahram Shahbazyan. Participatory democracy at local level: How and why participate in local self-governance? Yerevan, Armenia: Communities Finance Officers Association. 2011. Page 15.]

“The concepts of local governance and decentralization, at times used interchangeably, are related but different concepts.Decentralization is primarily a national political, legislative, institutional and fiscal process. While local governance can be affected by decentralization processes – for example, if local governments are expected to provide services formerly offered through national organisations – it may or may or may not be accompanied by decentralization, representative or participatory democratic processes, transparency, accountability or other defining characteristics of ‘good’ local governance.” [Alexandra Wilde, Shipra Narang, Marie Laberge, and Luisa Moretto. A Users’ Guide to Measuring Local Governance. Joachim Nahem, editor. Oslo, Norway: UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Oslo Governance Centre. 2009. Page 5.]

“Rather than viewing new kinds of collaborations simply as ways of solving problems, we should see them as ways of creating social capital and a more participatory democracy which include healthy local communities and ongoing dialogues among all sectors and citizens. We advocate a holistic approach that advances racial equality, respect for religious differences, healthy families and children, educational opportunities, and economic self-sufficiency for all. We are pas sionate in our belief that collaborations are the best vehicle to accomplish this kind of comprehensive change. Working together to solve intractable problems in our society, we are convinced that there is value per se in joint efforts across sectors to achieve healthy communities and in practicing democracy rather than just living in one. Collaborative efforts will build community by enhancing civic engagement and increasing citizen participation.” [Anita DeFrantz, Chris Gates, Claire Gaudiani, William W. George, James A. Joseph, Charles E. M. Kolb, Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, Carol Prendergast, Bruce Sievers, Edson Spencer, and Harris Wofford. Uniting America: Collaborating to Make Democracy Work. New York: The American Assembly. 2001. Page 18.]

“This movement [the e-government/e-citizen movement] is interested in exploring all the ways technology can be used to help government reach citizens and vice versa. Supporters of this movement believe technology can reform traditional governmental administrative processes and introduce exciting new participatory elements. They also believe this approach has great potential for stimulating young people’s interest in government because of the large amount of time young people already spend using communications and information media for other uses. The bottom line for public officials is that they will have to get smart fast about the capabilities of the myriad tools that now exist for communicating with, informing, and engaging citizens (websites, chat rooms, electronic bulletin boards, electronic town halls, e-mail, and so on), and be prepared to meet higher standards of accountability and accessibility. The place to look for some of the most innovative applications of technology to politics and governing is at the state and local level, where the Internet is being used to improve transparency. Backers of this approach envision unlimited benefits for our democracy from technology, including citizen-centric public services that are seamlessly integrated across levels of government and creative new partnerships among government, the private sector, academia, nonprofit organizations, and foundations.” [Gail Christopher, Chris Gates, Edie Goldenberg, Elizabeth Hollander, and Brian O’Connell. Strengthening Democracy through Citizen Engagement: Insights for Public Administrators. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Public Administration. July, 2003. Page 15.]

“The greatest potential benefit of participatory democracy seems to lie in the organization of decision making within the workplace. As a vehicle for coordinating activities among enterprises or for determining what kinds of consumer goods should be produced, it seems to offer far less promise.” [Joseph H. Carens. Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market: An Essay in Utopian Politico-Economic Theory. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press. 1981. Page 206.]

“As I worked for change, my vision of a good society grew clearer. I read more books on cooperation, participatory democracy, self-esteem, nonviolence, education, socialism, anarchism, and feminism.” [Randy Schutt. Inciting Democracy: A Practical Proposal for Creating a Good Society. Cleveland, Ohio: SpringForward Press. 2001. Page 2.]

“Rather than a system of winner-take-all elections for representatives who may or may not represent a constituency or may or may not look out for the common good, a good society would have a more direct and participatory decision system. If important decisions were decentralized to the local level, people could meet in relatively small groups to discuss the issues and look for solutions that would best solve society’s problems. This might require a great deal of time, but would result in much better decisions. It would also ensure that society was responsive to the needs of people.” [Randy Schutt. Inciting Democracy: A Practical Proposal for Creating a Good Society. Cleveland, Ohio: SpringForward Press. 2001. Page 26.]

“Forum-Asia aims to ‘empower people by advocating social justice, sustainable human development, participatory democracy, gender equality, peace and human security through collaboration and cooperation among human rights organisations in the region’ …. In order to achieve these goals, its members have recognized a need to establish a network of organizations at the local and global levels through which to develop ‘effective engagement with state and non-state actors.’ As it draws on a broad set of issues situated around the idea of human rights, the scope of issues enables Forum-Asia to act as a coherent amalgamation of interests. For the most part, the Forum has worked to influence larger fora, by adopting a strategy of parallel summitry. In particular, it works very closely with the UN [United Nations] and since 2004 has enjoyed consultative status within the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It has also used such engagement as a means of lobbying the Human Rights Council in Geneva.… Forum-Asia has a network-oriented role to act as a mechanism for capacity building among regional, ‘local,’ NGOs [nongovernmental organizations]. However, this role is seen as a cornerstone for the principal aim of activist lobbying against particular state actions, where the target of action is the states of the region themselves. Specific campaigns to date have included: a fight to highlight and seek redress for those adversely affected by chemical mining in Mongolia; seeking justice for victims of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in Timor Leste; lobbying against the human rights record of the Lao government; and encouraging the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to prioritize human rights issues. Thus, the Forum is viewed as providing its members with a means of monitoring state actions from an ‘above-region’ or ‘beyond-region’ position.” [Julie Gilson, “Governance and non-governmental organizations in East Asia: Building region-wide coalitions.” Civil Society and International Governance: The Role of Non-State Actors in the EU, Africa, Asia and Middle East. David Armstrong, Valeria Bello, Julie Gilson, and Debora Spini, editors. London and New York: Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa PLC business. 2011. Page 181-206.]

“Deference to national and local sovereignty, or to NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and participatory democracy, requires that national and local institutions are viable and legitimate. Yet throughout Africa and in other parts of the developing world, national governments are unable to launch the initiatives neces sary to combat hunger. Beleaguered by a lack of private or public capital, plagued by corruption and cronyism, it is not an exaggeration to say that the state as an agent of change is often hollow: ‘The state collapses from within, leaving citizens bereft of even the most basic conditions of a stable existence: law and security, trust in contracts, and a sound medium of exchange’ …. NGOs have, unsurprisingly, been drawn into this space, functioning as extensions of developed-country aid agencies, both national and multilateral. In one sense they fill a role left empty by the hollow state, providing needed support, infrastructure, and technical skills. But in another sense, they often project the values and preferences of the North, lowered onto the stage of the South.” [C. Ford Runge, Benjamin Senauer, Philip G. Pardey, and Mark W. Rosegrant. Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2003. Page 127.]

“Rarely can-and with great caution, should-a book be described as a genuine service to our world and our capacity for sympathies and connections. Yet Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization overcomes the natural skepticism attendant to such an appellation and should inspire readers to think of ending hunger as not only a moral imperative but also an attainable goal. In Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime, authors C. Ford Runge, Benjamin Senauer, Philip G. Pardey, and Mark W. Rosegrant write clearly about the experiences of the world’s hungry and the local, national, and global factors that figure in and bode for their situation. Furthermore, Ending Hunger in our Lifetime is not only extremely informative on food policy and security, but it also offers an illuminating non-doctrinaire grasp of globalization and the institutions, forces, and defaults that shape it.” [Richard J. Blaustein, “Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization.” Review article. Electronic Green Journal. Volume 1, number 20, 2004. Pages 1-5.]

“It might be argued that economic self-management is a form of social organization consistent with the ideology of Anarchism. The fundamental principle of Anarchism is the rejection of authority, with the possible exception of ‘natural authority,’ exercised by persuasion or force of example. On the Anarchist view, no person can ever have the right to issue directions to another person who is under any obligation to obey them. Anarchists have traditionally applied this principle to the State, arguing that society should be organized without a State of any kind, even a democratic one. To them majority voting, for example, entails a ‘tyranny of the majority,’ that is, the exercise of authority over dissenting minorities. The Anarchist rejection of authority might equally be applied to economic organizations such as firms.…

“Self-management cannot be regarded from the Marxist viewpoint as a capitalist form of economic organization, although some Marxists would argue that market self-management is an unstable type of economic system which must eventually transmute into either capitalism or socialism. Self-management accords well with the ideology of Anarchism, particularly its ‘Left’ or anarcho-communist variant. The viewpoint of participatory Democracy provides the soundest basis from which to advocate self-management, which can be seen as a natural extension of Democracy from the political to the economic sphere.”

[Donald A. R. George, “Self-management and Ideology.” Review of Political Economy. Volume 9, number 1, January 1997. Pages 51-62.]

“The freedom for the participants to collectively determine their own institutions and practices precludes that there can be a precise detailed definition of participatory democracy.…

“Participatory democracy emphasizes the participation of the politically, economically, and socially weaker sections of society, and their equality in the decision-making process with the elites. When this does not happen, existing inequalities are reproduced. This participation goes beyond a formal equality of voting at the final stage of decision making, and includes in particular that ordinary citizens or their representatives have a central role in the determination of the agenda. Once this happens, the questions which are debated and decided become those that are linked directly to the problems of the majority low-income social sectors.”

[Adalmir Marquetti, Carlos E. Schonerwald da Silva, and Al Campbell, “Participatory Economic Democracy in Action: Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre, 1989?2004.” Review of Radical Political Economics. Volume 44, number 1, 2012. Pages 62-81.]

“Innovative theorization of approaches to workplace democracy can be seen in ‘participism’ and inclusive democracy. Both theories emerged in the 1990s, but both have won special attention in the twenty-first century as a form of libertarian socialism, based on participatory economics (PARECON) and participatory politics (PARPOLITY). Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel are the founders of participism, an ‘anarchistic economic vision’ where the means of production are in the hands of the workers …. This is also foreseen in the theoretical concept of Inclusive Democracy, involving direct democracy and economic democracy in a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy, self-management (democracy in the social realm) and ecological democracy ….” [Markus Pausch, “Workplace Democracy: From a Democratic Ideal to a Managerial Tool and Back.” The Innovation Journal. Volume 19, number 1, 2014. Pages 1-19.]

“Young people have always circulated media in various forms, engaged in dialogue, produced content, investigated their worlds for information and insights, and mobilized peers toward shared goals. But evidence suggests that these activities have become less centralized and more prominent in the context of civics, in large part because of the dynamics of digital and social media. Participatory politics build on and reinforce three important shifts operating at the level of the individual, the collective, the institution, and the systems that connect all three.” [Elisabeth Soep. Participatory Politics: Next-Generation Tactics to Remake Public Spheres. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 2014. Page 10.]

“Our model of a participatory economy was designed to promote: a) economic justice, or equity, defined as economic reward commensurate with sacrifice, or effort; b) economic democracy, or self-management, defined as decision-making power in proportion to the degree one is affected by a decision; and c) solidarity, defined as concern for the well-being of others – all to be achieved without sacrificing economic efficiency while promoting a diversity of economic life styles as well. The major institutions used to achieve these goals are: 1) democratic councils of workers and consumers; 2) jobs balanced for empowerment and desirability; 3) remuneration according to effort as judged by one’s work mates; and 4) a participatory planning procedure in which councils and federations of workers and consumers propose and revise their own activities under mies designed to guarantee outcomes that are both efficient and equitable.” [Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, “In Defense of Participatory Economics.” Science & Society Volume 66, number 1, spring 2002. Pages 7-28.]

“Voluntary self-regulation is a wonderful sentiment, but as a method for resource allocation, it typically assumes away important underlying complexities. For people to self-regulate in accord with worthy values and real possibilities requires a means for people to determine what qualifies as worthy choices regarding both work and consumption; a context that makes people’s well-being depend on and enhance the well-being of others; and a process that apportions self-managing say to each. In fact, parecon’s allocation system is built on the idea of viable, collective self-regulation. That is precisely what it delivers, but without assuming away complexities.” [Michael Albert. What’s Next?: Parecon (Participatory Economics). Washington, D.C.: The Next System Project. 2016. Page 7.]

“Our major purpose in this article is to rebut the claim that there is no alternative to markets and authoritarian planning. In the main body we describe our model of participatory planning and explain why there is every reason to believe it is both feasible and desirable.…

“… what distinguishes our model of a participatory economy from earlier contributions is the careful elaboration of a planning procedure that allows the various councils and federations to propose and revise their own activities efficiently and fairly.”

[Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, “Participatory Planning.” Science & Society. Volume 56, number 1, spring 1992. Pages 39-59.]

“This article proposes a pollution damage revealing mechanism (PDRM) designed to overcome, or at least ameliorate, a number of perverse incentives, and argues that when incorporated into the participatory planning procedure of a theoretical economic model known as a ‘participatory economy’ the PDRM would, in theory, lead to efficient emission levels for different pollutants.…

“… This article draws on lessons learned about perverse incentives from a close examination of the Coase theorem to construct a PDRM that avoids or ameliorates perverse incentives. When this PDRM is incorporated into the participatory planning procedure of a participatory economy it is argued that at least in theory the plan arrived at would achieve reasonably efficient levels of emissions for different pollutants.”

[Robin Hahnel, “Wanted: A Pollution Damage Revealing Mechanism.” Review of Radical Political Economics. Volume 49, number 2, June 2017. Pages 233-246.]

“Parecon [participatory economics] doesn’t reduce productivity, but instead provides adequate and proper incentives to work at the level people desire to consume. It doesn't bias toward longer hours, but allows free choice of work versus leisure. It doesn’t pursue what is most profitable regardless of impact on workers, ecology, and even consumers, but reorients output toward what is truly beneficial, in light of the lull social and environmental costs and benefits.

“Parecon doesn’t waste the human talents of people now doing surgery, composing music, or otherwise engaging in skilled labour by requiring that they do offsetting less empowering labour as well, but by this requirement unlocks a gargantuan reservoir of previously untapped talents throughout the populace, while apportioning empowering and rote labour not only justly, but in accord with self management and classlessness.”

[Michael Albert, “Towards Life After Capitalism: An Introduction to Participatory Economics.” Briarpatch. Volume 34, number 6, September–October 2005. Pages 14-19.]

“The pareconist [participatory economist] internationalist says that we ought to receive for our labors remuneration in tune with how hard we have worked, how long we have worked, and how great a sacrifice we have made in our work. We shouldn’t get more because we use more productive tools, have more skills, or have greater inborn talent, much less should we get more because we have more power or own more property. We should get more only by virtue of how much effort we have expended or how much sacrifice we have endured in our useful work. This is morally appropriate, and it also provides proper incentives by rewarding only what we can affect and not what is beyond our control.” [Michael Albert. Parecon: Life After Capitalism. London and New York: Verso Books imprint of New Left Books. 2003. Page 10.]

“… I and many folks I have worked with were quite influenced by [Rosa] Luxemburg and [Anton] Pannekoek, in particular, and by [Michael] Kropotkin, [Mikhail] Bakunin, and various other anarchists, as well. I think parecon is an extension of that very broad heritage, and I think participatory society is too, though that is a larger leap given the relative economism in the past.

“The idea of councils is consistent, clearly, with past priorities of this broad trend. I think parecon spells out self-management more carefully than many others have, but nonetheless, my guess is they would have no problem with it. The ideas of equitable remuneration shouldn’t cause any of them any difficulty, I think — were they here to let us know — but these ideas are again, spelled out more carefully and I hope more clearly in the parecon literature.”

[Michael Albert, “There is an alternative: participatory economics.” ROAR. April 21st, 2012. Online publication. No pagination.]

“Movement dynamics would have to create a diverse movement culture, institute real participatory democracy, and elevate nonwhite, nonacademic, nonmale leadership as critical elements of a strategy for change.…

“… a true theory of the working class must pay more attention to qualitative activity, information flows, and decision-making hierarchies. It must help reveal that existence and interests of the coordinator class and correct the longstanding confusion of coordinatorism for socialism. It must help devise forms of participatory allocation superior to markets and central planning, and forms of council organization and equitable local role definition superior to traditional hierarchy. And it must help conceive strategies capable of empowering workers rather than coordinators.”

[Michael Albert, “Why Marxism isn’t the activist’s answer.” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine. Volume 39, issue 7, December 1987. Pages 43-55.]

“Yes, I do think it is fair [to say that Parecon is anarchist]. Anarchism is a very broad and rich approach to understanding social relations and affecting them. Most broadly anarchism says we don’t want hierarchies of wealth and power which enable and even compel some people to dominate while other people, generally far more numerous, are subordinate. Parecon takes that agenda into the economy and proposes a way to accomplish production, allocation, and consumption, that is consistent with not having any one constituency, by virtue of its economic position, dominating any other. Parecon is in this regard a classless economy, an economy without class hierarchy, and is in that sense, I think, very much in the anarchist tradition.” [Michael Albert, ParEcon and Anarchism?” ZNet: A community of people committed to social change. Website. Undated. Retrieved on December 31st, 2016.]

“Longer presentations of parecon [participatory economics] assess ease of operations, efficiency and quality of outcomes, etc. But for here, the reader may note that for full self-management the decisions of a workplace regarding what to produce must also be influenced by the people affected by its production. Those who consume the workplace’s books, bicycles, or band-aids must affect their production. Even those who don’t get some other product because energy, time, and assets went to the books, bicycles, or band-aids and not to producing what they wanted, have to affect the choice. And even those tangentially affected, such as by pollution, have to have influence. Accommodating the will of the workers with the will of other actors in appropriate balance is a matter of allocation, not of workplace organization, and it enters our discussion shortly.” [Michael Albert. Realizing Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism. London and New York: Zed Books. 2006. Page 10.]

“Parecon [participatory economics] certainly urges the need to build experiments in future organization today, which is what solidarity economy centrally emphasizes. No problem there. Parecon also urges the need to organize and fight for changes inside existing economic institutions, which I suspect solidarity economy agrees is centrally important, even though it doesn’t itself emphasize that. There is probably no problem here, either. Parecon urges that a few key institutions are necessary if an economy is to foster solidarity, equity, self management, etc., and that certain others must be rejected, if those are the goals. This, however, may be a problem, though I can’t see why it ought to be. Pareconists [participatory economists] should have no problem, at least in my view, relating to a movement that contains lots of people who think differently about these matters, or who even think markets or private ownership have a place in the future, supposing the people are open to discussing these claims. Is solidarity economy equally open to incorporating and relating to the work and ideas of people who do have strong ideas about future institutions, both those favored and those rejected? If so, let’s get together!” [Michael Albert, “Solidarity and Participatory Economics,” in Ethan Miller and Michael Albert. Post-Capitalist Alternatives: New Perspectives on Economic Democracy. London, Ontario: Socialist Renewal Publishing Project. 2009. Creative Commons. Pages 23-29.]

“In this article we describe the main features of the model of a participatory economy … including how production would be managed by worker councils and federations using balanced job complexes; how consumption would be organized by consumer councils and federations according to the principle ‘to each according to his or her work effort;’ and how worker and consumer councils and federations would participate in a social, iterative, planning procedure we call participatory planning capable of yielding a feasible, efficient and equitable plan.

“The usual argument against such a system has been to insist it is impossible. But recently the focus of criticism has changed. Critics have not challenged the technical feasibility of our model. None have argued that our planning procedure is incoherent, or incapable of yielding a feasible plan under assumptions traditionally granted other theoretical models.”

[Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, “Socialism As It Was Always Meant To Be.” Review of Radical Political Economics. Volume 24, number 2 and 3, 1992. Pages 46-66.]

“There is a definite break between capitalism and socialism when private enterprise is replaced by social ownership and markets are replaced by participatory, democratic planning. However, once these institutional changes have been made it is a mistake to think of socialism as being divided into ‘stages’ or that productivity levels have any bearing on the pace of social transformation. As the historical memories of injustice and authoritarianism in the populace are left farther and farther behind and replaced by new memories of being treated fairly by others and participating ever more fully in economic decision-making, it is highly probable that solidarity will increase, people will become more willing to trust others with less need for investigation, rates of participation in all forms of decision-making will increase, and more and more distribution will be based on need with less and less reason to worry about monitoring work efforts.” [Robin Hahnel, “Question 4: Stages and Productive Forces.” Science & Society. Volume 76, number 2, April 2012. Pages 219-220.]

“… in the midst of escalating economic dysfunction, new economic initiatives are sprouting up everywhere. What these diverse ‘new’ or ‘future’ economy initiatives have in common is that they reject the economics of competition and greed and aspire instead to develop an economics of equitable cooperation that is environmentally sustainable. What they also have in common is that they must survive in a hostile economic environment. Helping these exciting and hopeful future economic initiatives grow and stay true to their principles will require us to think more clearly about what kind of ‘next system’ these initiatives point toward. It is in this spirit that the model of a participatory economy was created: What kind of ‘next system’ would support the economics of sustainable and equitable cooperation?” [Robin Hahnel. Participatory Economics & the Next System. Washington, D.C.: The Next System Project. 2015. Page 2.]

“Whenever possible, consensus would be sought. However, to insist on consensus in every case is to give every individual the power to block the overwhelming majority. Such an approach is ill-advised. It is sometimes said that even a large group should be forced to respect and acknowledge the sentiments of a single dissenter who feels strongly on an issue. Respect and acknowledgment are fine; but the question is whether the strong feelings of the one dissenter should invariably be able to block the equally strong feelings of everyone else. Say there is general agreement to provide abortion procedures at a local health clinic. One individual deeply and strongly considers such an action to be murder. The others, however, hold equally deep and strong views that to prohibit abortion is to violate women’s most fundamental rights. They talk, they debate, they respect the moral seriousness of each other, they find some areas of common agreement (say on the need to provide resources for those women who choose to carry their pregnancies to term), but at the end of the day they cannot reach a consensus. In that case, a vote, decided by majority rule, is the only just option. To allow the lone dissenter to block action is to deny the overwhelming majority ultimate authority to decide their own fates. There is nothing magical about 50 percent plus one, but it does deserve more moral weight than 50 percent minus one.” [Stephen R. Shalom, “ParPolity: Political Vision for a Good Society.” ZNet: A community of people committed to social change. Website. November 22nd, 2005. Retrieved on December 31st, 2016.]

“… a participatory economy entails social ownership of productive property, self-managed workplaces and neighbourhood councils. Inside workplaces decisions are made democratically and each worker has one vote, jobs are balanced so that no-one is left with only rote and disempowering work and payment is made according to one’s effort or personal sacrifice. Citizens in communities belong to neighbourhood councils where they can participate in decisions over consumption and local public goods. Workers’ and consumers’ councils are linked through a democratic federated structure made up of larger geographical units, and a de-centralised democratic planning procedure is used to create the overall plan for the economy.” [Anders Sandstrom, Chris Chrysostomou, Jason Chrysostomou, and Florian Zollman. Participatory Economics: A Model for a New Economy. London: Participatory Economics. 2014. Page 5.]

“The difference between a planned economy and an unplanned, market economy, is that to the extent that consumers submit proposals that reflect their changed circumstances and tastes, and to the extent that worker councils submit proposals that reflect their new technologies and work preferences, the plan creates an initial situation that reduces the number and size of adjustments that are necessary. All mechanisms for making adjustments in a market economy are available if wanted in a planned economy as well, although presumably a participatory economy would put a higher priority on using mechanisms that distribute the costs of adjustments more fairly.” [Robin Hahnel, “In Defence of Participatory Economics,” in Robin Hahnel and Erik Olin Wright. Alternatives to Capitalism: Proposals for a democratic economy. London: New Left Project. 2014. Pages 37-58.]

“… I regard most contemporary advocates of community-based economics as intellectual allies like our council communist, syndicalist, anarchist and guild socialist forebears. I invite them to consider the procedures of participatory planning when they think further about how they would coordinate economic relations among communities that are, in fact, only semi-autonomous. I further invite them to reflect on how they would propose communities comprised of different groups of workers and consumers apportion decision-making authority internally as well.” [Robin Hahnel, “Eco-localism: A Constructive Critique.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. Volume 18, number 2, June 2007. Pages 62-78.]

“How might an economy fail to distribute goods and services in a way that is beyond moral reproach? Proponents of participatory economics believe that ignoring differences in sacrifice would be immoral. We also believe that ignoring differences in need is morally unacceptable. But there are two ways to think about and pose these objections. One is to describe either failure as ‘unjust.’ In effect this makes ‘economic justice’ and ‘morally acceptable’ synonymous. The other way is to draw a distinction between what it means for an economy to be just and what it means for an economy to be humane. In this usage it is conceivable that a just economy—which provides compensation commensurate with people’s efforts and sacrifices—might fail to be humane by denying those with greater needs what they require. In this usage it is also possible that a humane economy— which compensates all with greater needs appropriately—might fail to treat people fairly; for example, by rewarding people on the basis of the contribution of their person and property rather than their efforts and sacrifices.” [Robin Hahnel. Of the People, By the People. London: Soapbox Press. 2012. Kindle edition.]

“Is Parecon Marxist? If not, why not?

“The short answer is yes and no. It is, in that it utilizes many insights that owe to that school of thought. It is not, however, because it rejects certain key comittments of that school of thought.

“It accepts, for example, that class is critically important, but rejects that class is alone critically important. It accepts that there are workers and owners in capitalism, who face off in class struggle. But it adds that there is a third critically important class, the coordinator class.…

“… Marxists would need to jettison their base/superstructure conceptualization and instead highlight that gender, race, and political dynamics can impact economics just as powerfully as vice versa. Marxism would need to recognize both directions of causality, not exclusively or even primarily only causality from economics to the rest of society, and would have to refine many of its concepts accordingly. This type critique has in the past propelled feminists to create socialist feminism (to try to merge insights from gender-focused and classfocused analysis) and has led also to variants of anarcho-marxism, Marxist nationalism, and so on regarding other conceptual combinations, right up to frameworks that centrally address economics, polity, culture, and kinship all on a par.…

“And you still wouldn’t call yourself a Marxist …?

“Correct.… [V]irtually every variant of Marxism, Marxist class theory literally denies the existence of what I call the coordinator (professional-managerial or technocratic) class and undercounts its antagonisms with the working class as well as with capital. This particular failing has long obstructed class analysis of the old Soviet, Eastern European, and Third World non-capitalist economies, and of capitalism itself.”

[Editor, “Marxism and Parecon?” ZNet: A community of people committed to social change. Website. Undated. Retrieved on December 31st, 2016.]

“The only way to avoid the creation of a nonsocialist coordinator society, argue [Michael] Albert and [Robin] Hahnel, is to first elaborate institutions and relations which embody the general principles of human solidarity, plurality of life’s options and outcomes and collective self-management and to establish these institutions and relations …. After all, while the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to coordinator domination is the neglect of the totality.” [Avery Gordon and Andrew Herman, “The Resurrection of Utopian Socialism.” Review of Radical Political Economics. Volume 15, number 4, 1983. Pages 104-125.]

“While [Robin] Hahnel and [Michael] Albert’s defense of distribution according to sacrifice is compelling, there are potential complications when one tries, as Hahnel and Albert do, to base an economic system on that principle. Hahnel and Albert advocate a marketless economic system organized around worker and consumer councils and co-ordinated by a participatory planning procedure.3 In Hahnel’s and Albert’s vision of a participatory economy, individual rewards would be based not on performance as determined by a labor market but on the evaluations of one’s co-workers. Such peer evaluations would judge the intensity of one’s effort and, combined with the number of hours one worked, give a fair assessment of the rewards that any worker could lay claim to. Reaching this fair assessment of rewards would be facilitated by the fact that, in a participatory economy, people would hold jobs that were balanced for empowerment and pleasantness. Instead of a hierarchical occupational structure, in which a minority hold jobs that are pleasant and socially empowering, while the rest work in jobs that are often monotonous, dangerous, and disempowering, a participatory economy would be made up of jobs that combined some desirable tasks with some less desirable tasks. In this way, the degree of sacrifice required by an hour of work would be equalized and the combination of peer evaluations and hours of one’s work would be enough to determine fair compensation for each worker.” [Costas Panayotakis, “Individual Differences and the Potential Tradeoffs Between the Values of a Participatory Economy.” Review of Radical Political Economics. Volume 41, number 1, winter 2009. Pages 23-42.]

“To put it simply, a resource-based economy uses resources rather than money, and people have access to whatever they need without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude. All of the world’s resources are held as the common heritage of all of Earth’s people.

“The real wealth of any nation is not its money, but the developed and potential resources and the people who work toward the elimination of scarcity for a more humane society.

“If this is still confusing to you consider this: If a group of people were stranded on an island with money, gold, and diamonds, but the island had no arable land, fish or clean water, their wealth would be irrelevant to their survival.”

[Jacque Fresco. Designing the Future. Venus, Florida: The Venus Project, Inc. 2007. Page 21.]

“Along with a new orientation toward human and environmental concerns, there must be a methodology for making this a reality. If these ends are to be achieved, the monetary system must evolve into a world resource-based economy. To effectively and economically utilize resources, cybernated and computerized technology must be applied in order to ensure a higher standard of living for everyone. With intelligent and humane applications of science and technology, we will be able to guide and shape our future for the preservation of the environment and ourselves for the generations to come.” [Jacque Fresco. The Best that Money Can’t Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War. Venus, Florida: Global Cyber-Visions imprint of The Venus Project, Inc. 2002. Page 27.]

“As … technologies give humans ever greater power to collect the earth’s vast resources and distribute them to all, we may see a new social structure in which ‘the age-old failures of war, poverty, hunger, debt, nationalism, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as fully avoidable, but also totally unacceptable,’ says Fresco. He refers to this as a ‘global resource-based economy where all of the earth’s resources are declared the common heritage of all the world’s people.’” [Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows, “Engineering a New Vision of Tomorrow.” The Futurist. Volume 36, number 1, January–February 2002. Pages 33-36.]

“Today, various terms exists to express the general logical basis for a more scientifically oriented social system in different circles, including the titles ‘Resource-Based Economy’ or ‘Natural Law Economy.’ While these titles are historically referential and somewhat arbitrary overall, the title ‘Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy’ (NLRBE) will be utilized here since it has the most concrete semantic basis.” [The Zeitgeist Movement’s linguistics team (Andrés Delgado, Bakari Pace, Brandon Kristy, Brandy Hume, Douglas Mallette, Eva Omori, Federico Pistono, Gilbert Ismail, James Phillips, Jason Lord, Jen Wilding, Miguel Oliveira, Sharleen Bazeghi, and Tom Williams). The Zeitgeist Movement Defined: Realizing a New Train of Thought. 1st edition. Ben McLeish, Matt Berkowitz, and Peter Joseph, editors. Miami, Florida: The Zeitgeist Movement Global. January, 2014. Creative Commons. Page 9.]

“Socialism, like capitalism, has no universally accepted definition in general public conversation but is often technically defined as ‘an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy.’ The root of socialist thought appears to go back to 18ᵗʰ century Europe, with a complex history of ‘reformers’ working to challenge the emerging capitalist system. Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797) is a notable theorist in this area, with his ‘Conspiracy of Equals’ which attempted to topple the French Government. He stated ‘Society must be made to operate in such a way that it eradicates once and for all the desire of a man to become richer, or wiser, or more powerful than others.’ French Socialist-Anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) is famous for declaring that ‘Property is Theft’ in his pamphlet An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government.” [The Zeitgeist Movement’s linguistics team (Andrés Delgado, Bakari Pace, Brandon Kristy, Brandy Hume, Douglas Mallette, Eva Omori, Federico Pistono, Gilbert Ismail, James Phillips, Jason Lord, Jen Wilding, Miguel Oliveira, Sharleen Bazeghi, and Tom Williams). The Zeitgeist Movement Defined: Realizing a New Train of Thought. 1st edition. Ben McLeish, Matt Berkowitz, and Peter Joseph, editors. Miami, Florida: The Zeitgeist Movement Global. January, 2014. Creative Commons. Pages 80-81.]

“In a resource-based economy, where production is streamlined to maximize quality and minimize waste and duplication the idea of property becomes obsolete and, in fact, detrimental. People do not need to hoard and protect anything. They simply need access to what they need at the time they need it. The best example is the automobile. We’ve been finding in science now there have been tests done of cars that can drive themselves. It’s been tested: satellite-driven automobiles that can navigate very well.” [Peter Joseph, “Social Pathology.” Talk presented on March 13th, 2010, in New York City. Retrieved on July 7th, 2016.]

“In order to interrogate the masculine discourse that pervades even social movement organizations such as The Zeitgeist Movement, it is essential to include a discussion of the overarching system of patriarchy that it works to support.… Acknowledging both the institutional and discursive oppression that results from patriarchy provides a more complete analysis of the ways that social movements can perpetuate inequality.

“Of course, women undoubtedly participate in the system of patriarchy and oppression as well.… Oppressed and oppressor may share the same gender, cultural background and both may participate in what [Bell] Hooks refers to as the ‘politics of domination’ …. In other words, the ‘Other’ can and does participate in systems of inequality and oppression.”

[Tiffany Ann Dykstra. (Cyber)activism in an Online Social Movement: Exploring Dialectics and Discourse in the Zeitgeist Movement. M.A. thesis. Texas Tech University. Lubbock, Texas. May, 2012. Pages 19-20.]

“There is no question that technological growth trends in science and industry are increasing exponentially. There is, however, a growing debate about what this runaway acceleration of ingenuity may bring. A number of respected scientists and futurists now are predicting that technological progress is driving the world toward a ‘Singularity’ – a point at which technology and nature will have become one. At this juncture, the world as we have known it will have gone extinct and new definitions of ‘life,’ ‘nature’ and ‘human’ will take hold.” [James Bell, “Technotopia and the Death of Nature.” Earth Island Journal. Volume 17, number 2, summer 2002. Pages 36-38.]

“‘Zeitgeist’ has all but replaced the fringegroups discussing September 11ᵗʰ being an inside-job and other irrelevant ‘conspiracies’ (of course the conspiracy industry is reluctant to acknowledge the two greatest public conspiracies: capital and the State). In other words, the anti-political fiction du-jour has had quite the metamorphosis. Alex Jones, one of the entrepreneurs of the conspiracy industry and proponents of ‘New World Order’ ‘theory’ (if ever a word was so bastardized), has been dethroned by Peter Joseph and his hypothetical technological utopia.…

“… for the uninitiated, the Zeitgeist Movement has now claimed to be the ‘activist arm’ of the Venus Project, a strange organization spearheaded by social engineer and architect Jaque Fresco. Without digressing into an abyss, a brief overview of the Venus Project would be relevant to the discussion: a technologically advanced city blueprint that did away with money, war, environmental degradation, and eventually, they claim, government. Jaque Fresco and Zeitgeist leader Peter Joseph describe these sustainable cities as encompassing a ‘resource-based economy.’ …

“What would be relevant to anti-authoritarians about such a movement? What should be relevant is the fact that many are co-opting, connoting, or merely associating the movement with anarchism.

“An overview of ‘Zeitgeist’ sounds good, and anti-authoritarian. What’s the problem, you may ask? The main problem is that it’s a utopian vision, i.e., the Zeitgeist Movement goes in depth on how the new world will look, but it offers no vision on how to create the new world within the shell of the old. The second problem is essentially an extension of the former: people should not be told what kind of society they should have. It is highly doubtful that anti-authoritarian theory can come from an authority, academic or otherwise. Anti-authoritarian theory is participatory, and if meaningful, is created by a majority. Wherein ‘revolution’ is needed, to remain anti-authoritarian and relevant to a majority of the population, it requires the majority. Otherwise, it risks the danger of becoming a vanguard. But ‘Zeitgeist’ has no mention of how to get from here-to-there.…

“One would think that someone who is articulating a framework for overthrowing the State and capitalism would have done some research. Either Joseph is omitting the works of [Karl] Marx and classical anarchism, i.e., the revolutionary aspects of what is called the Left, or he is simply omitting the history to appeal to a constituency that is of the extremist right. Think about the opposite scenario: let’s assume that I try to sell a scheme to the Left that involves completely deregulated markets, dated ideas like the gold standard, condemn war because it isn’t cost-effective, seek to abolish all taxes and reduce the role of government, but never mention the history of lasaize-faire economics; I don’t think that the left would be as kind, and quickly point out that I am trying to pitch them a rehashed, watered-down version of capitalism.”

[Anonymous. The Problem with “Zeitgeist.” Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 3-4.]

“At mid-century, Jacques Fresco emerged as one of America’s pre-eminent engineers and is today a well-known futurologist. Trained in industrial design, he worked for both the government and private sector as a research designer and churned out an astounding roll-call of inventions: systems for noiseless aircraft; three-wheeled cars; and proposals for floating cities and prefab houses. His aesthetic has become perhaps one of the most clichéd visions of tomorrow, an Epcot Center meets The Jetsons picture of white orb-like structures, geodesic domes and pristinely choreographed urban planning. Fresco’s future may, of course, seem outmoded and his writings have been subject to critique for their fascistic undertones of order and similitude, but his contributions are etched in the popular psyche and his eco-friendly concepts continue to influence our present generation of progressive architects, city planners and designers. In the West, countless other visions of the future have been expounded before, since, and in conjunction with, Fresco.” [Hans Ulrich Obrist, “Futures, Cities.” Journal of Visual Culture. Volume 6, number 3, 2007. Pages 259-264.]

“… socialism is anarchy and federation.…

“Only now can we socialists breathe freely and accept the inescapable hardship, our task, as a piece of our existence. Now we feel the living certainty that our idea is not an opinion which we adopt but a mighty compulsion that places us before the choice: either to experience the real destruction of mankind in advance and to watch its beginnings eroding around us, or to make the first beginning of the ascent with our own action.

“The end of the world, which we here allow to threaten as a spectre of possible reality, of course does not mean sudden extinction. We warn against the analogy and inclination to find an inviolable sort of rule in it, because we know of a few times of decline which were then followed by great periods. When we visualize with what unparalleled speed the nations and their classes are becoming more alike in this capitalist civilization: how the proletarians are becoming dull, submissive, crude, external, and to an increasing extent, alcoholics, how together with their loss of religion they are beginning to lose every sort of internal feeling and responsibility, how all this is beginning to take physical effect; how the upper classes are losing the power for politics, for a comprehensive view and decisive action, how art is being replaced by foppery, modish frippery, and archeological or historical imitation, how with the old religion and morality every firm standard, every sacred allegiance, every firmness of character is being lost, how women are being drawn into the whirlpool of superficial sensuality, of colorful, decorative lasciviousness; how the natural unreflected population increase is beginning to decline in all strata of the people and being replaced by sex without children under the guidance of science and technology; how irresponsibility is pervading precisely the better elements among the proletarians and citizens, who can no longer bear to do joyless work under the prevailing conditions.

[Gustav Landauer. Call to Socialism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1911. Pages 33 and 59.]

“Anyone who is not blinded by the dogmas of the political parties will recognize that anarchism and socialism are not opposed but co-dependent. True cooperative labor and true community can only exist where individuals are free, and free individuals can only exist where our needs are met by brotherly solidarity.

“It is mandatory to fight the false social democratic claims that anarchism and socialism are as opposed as “fire and water.” Those who make such claims usually argue thus: Socialism means ‘socialization.’ This means in turn that society – a vague term usually encompassing all human beings who inhabit the earth – will be amalgamated, unified, and centralized. The so-called ‘interests of humanity’ become the highest law, and the specific interests of certain social groups and individuals become secondary. Anarchism, on the other hand, means individualism, i.e., the desire of individuals to assert power without limits; it spells atomization and egoism. As a result, we have incompatible opposites: socialization and individual sacrifice on the one hand; individualization and self-centeredness on the other.”

[Gustav Landauer, “Anarchism-Socialism.” Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader. Gabriel Kuhn, translator and editor. Oakland, California: PM Press. 2010. Pages 70-74.]

“[Gustav] Landauer’s concept of socialism was definitely not marxist, nor even Bakuninist collectivism, owing more to [Pierre] Proudhon’s mutualism. ‘The independent individual, who lets no one interfere in his business, for whom the house community of the family, with home and workplace, is his world, the autonomous local community, the country or group of communities, and so on, ever more broadly with more comprehensive groups that have an ever smaller number of duties… that alone is socialism.’ ‘That is the task of socialism, to arrange the exchange economy so that each one… works only for himself.’

“It must be emphasized that Landauer’s concept of capitalism was also more Proudhonist than Marxist. He was not opposed to exchange nor individual ownership. For Landauer capitalism was the perversion of exchange by privilege — ultimately backed and created by the State. Furthermore, the spirit of this capitalism was calculating and materialist to the exclusion of every other aspect of human existence.

“Landauer believed that the existing socialist movement would be coopted by capitalism and the State and that the long-projected socialist revolution would not occur because of this adaptability. He criticized [Karl] Marx’s view that cooperation and socialization automatically grows out of capitalism, seeing it as wishful thinking. According to H. J. Heydorn, Landauer saw that ‘capitalist society, represented by the existing state, adapts marvelously to the changing conditions, integrating the proletariat through the development of social legislation causing it to degenerate, rather than leading to socialist society. Rather it absorbs the socialists, making their ideology superfluous.’”

[Larry Gambone. For Community: The Communitarian Anarchism Of Gustav Landauer. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2001. Page 10.]

“Anarchism is, for us [social anarchists], an ideology; this being a set of ideas, motivations, aspirations, values, a structure or system of concepts that has a direct connection with action – that which we call political practice. Ideology requires the formulation of final objectives (long term, future perspectives), the interpretation of the reality in which we live and a more or less approximate prognosis about the transformation of this reality. From this analysis ideology is not a set of abstract values and ideas, dissociated from practice with a purely reflective character, but rather a system of concepts that exist in the way in which it is conceived together with practice and returns to it. Thus, ideology requires voluntary and conscious action with the objective of imprinting the desire for social transformation on society.” [Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro. Social Anarchism and Organisation: The Context of the 2008 Congress and the Debate about Organisation. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2008. Page 5.]

“[Gustav] Landauer’s education in romanticism and socialism began at an early age. In his adolescent years he was already an admirer of [Arthur] Schopenhauer’s philosophy and [Wilhelm Richard] Wagner’s music dramas, and in his local gymnasium in Karlsruhe [Germany] he was exposed to the völkisch [ethnic] nationalist education that German schoolboys regularly received. In his early twenties, however, at the University of Berlin, his apolitical romanticism was given a new political thrust by his increasing concern for the plight of the industrial working classes of the German capital city; by the age of twenty-one he considered himself a socialist, having received a superficial education in Marxian philosophy. Landauer’s socialism was not materialist, either in these early years or later, however, and his early abandonment of Marxism revealed the ethical-idealist and romantic sources of his socialist commitment. Marxism, moreover, was represented in Germany after 1891 by a mass political party that had no use for the utopian and romantic early [Karl] Marx but proclaimed instead a species of Marxian philosophy suited to the late nineteenth-century cult of scientific determinism. The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was a bureaucratic, centralized structure which had little appeal to romantic intellectuals such as the young Landauer. In reaction to the form of socialism the SPD represented, Landauer moved toward an anarchist rejection of all forms of centralized authority in social and political life, aided in his quest for a libertarian alternative to social democracy by a group of SPD dissidents called the Berliner Jungen [Berlin Boys].” [Eugene Lunn. Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1973. Page 17.]

“We tentatively call … [our] new orientation complementary holism. It is rooted in two modern scientific principles: ‘holism’ and ‘complementarity.’ ‘Holism’ informs us that reality’s many parts always act together to form an entwined whole. In the words of physicist David Bohm, all phenomena are ‘to be understood not as…independently and permanently existent but rather as product[s] that [have been] formed in the whole flowing movement and that will ultimately dissolve back into that movement.’ Of course Bohm doesn’t mean to imply that a useful understanding of an electron in a lab of a physicist in N.Y. can’t be had unless we also explain the texture of wood in a staircase in the Kremlin. The influences of the latter will be too slight to care about. But he does mean to highlight that, since all phenomena influence all other phenomena, we should always be very careful about how we abstract any particular aspect of our surroundings from the whole. Extracting the economy from the rest of society, for example, will often be ill advised. Here the interactions are too important to exclude any from our focus. Since in practice it is not so easy to keep this rather obvious guideline in mind, choosing concepts that continually highlight its importance can help.

“Complementarity, in the sense we use it, means that the parts which compose wholes interrelate to help define one another, even though each appears often to have an independent and even contrary existence. Our definition, as further developed below, is a somewhat altered form of the general complementarity principle developed by scientist Niels Bohr and other members of what is called the ‘Copenhagen School,’ who felt the more precise quantum physics definition of complementarity was generalizable to various social and historical phenomena.”

[Michael Albert, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Lydia Sargent, and Holly Sklar. Liberating Theory. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. 1986. Page 11.]

“It is … obvious that economic democracy requires … [a] type of social ownership which secures a democratic ownership and control of productive resources and that the only form of ownership which can guarantee it is demotic (community) ownership. This type of ownership leads to the politicization of the economy, the real synthesis of economy and polity – a synthesis, which can only be achieved within the institutional framework of an inclusive democracy. This framework, by definition, excludes any divorce of ownership from control and secures the pursuit of the general interest. This is so because, as shown below, economic decision-making is carried out by the entire community, through the citizens’ assemblies, where people take the fundamental macro-economic decisions which affect all the community, as citizens, rather than as vocationally oriented groups (workers, technicians, engineers, farmers, etc.). At the same time, people at the workplace, apart from participating in the community decisions about the overall planning targets, would also participate as workers (in the above broad sense of vocationally oriented groups) in their respective workplace assemblies, in a process of modifying/implementing the Democratic Plan and in running their own workplace.” [Takis Fotopoulos. Towards an Inclusive Democracy: The crisis of the growth economy and the need for a new liberatory project. London and New York: Cassell. 1997. Page 247.]

“… we need not just a new type of politics which would embrace the politics of difference as part of a general project for human emancipation, but also a new kind of analysis that would interpret the class divisions which characterise today’s internationalised market economy. This new type of analysis and politics could be based on the Inclusive Democracy (ID) project which, founded on a conception of democracy in terms of individual and collective autonomy, offers an ideal focus to discuss the politics of difference and identity. Furthermore, the ID project, albeit a general project for human emancipation that explicitly recognises the importance of the institutional framework and of the ‘dominant social paradigm,’ does not involve any grand narrative. An inclusive democracy is conceived as the result of a self-reflective choice for individual and collective autonomy, rather than as the outcome of a historical process that creates the possibility for it.” [Takis Fotopoulos, “Class Divisions Today—the Inclusive Democracy Approach.” Democracy & Nature. Volume 6, number 2, July 2000. Pages 211-251.]

“It is … obvious that the crisis which began about two centuries ago, when the system of the market economy and representative democracy was established, has, in the past twenty years or so, intensified, as it has led to the present huge concentration of economic power and the related ecological crisis. In other words, the Inclusive Democracy project, which proposes the equal distribution of power, is suggested as the only long-term solution to this chronic and constantly worsening crisis.” [Takis Fotopoulos, “The Inclusive Democracy Project—A Rejoinder.” Democracy & Nature. Volume 9, number 3, November 2003. Pages 429-471.]

“… a market economy today can only be an internationalised one—something that implies that markets have to be as open and as flexible as possible. So, globalisation and its main effects, i.e. the present concentration of power and the continuous worsening of the ecological crisis, will persist for as long as the present institutional framework—that secures the concentration of political and economic power—reproduces itself, in other words, for as long as the market economy system and representative ‘democracy’ are not replaced by an institutional framework securing the equal distribution of political and economic power among all citizens, i.e. an inclusive democracy.” [Takis Fotopoulos, “Transitional Strategies and the Inclusive Democracy Project.” Democracy & Nature. Volume 8, number 1, March 2002. Pages 17-62.]

“At the outset, it has to be made clear that Parecon [Michael Albert’s participatory economics], unlike Inclusive Democracy, is not a political project about an alternative society, with its own analysis of present society, an overall vision of a future society and a strategy and tactics that will move us from here to there. Parecon is simply an economic model for an alternative economy and as such does not feature any political, cultural and broader social institutions. The explanation given for this is that ‘models for such institutions still await development’ …. However, given that the Parecon model was developed well over a decade ago, one can hardly accept this explanation.” [Takis Fotopoulos, “Inclusive Democracy and Participatory Economics.” Democracy & Nature. Volume 9, number 3, November 2003. Pages 401-425.]

“… the ID [Inclusive Democracy] proposal introduces a clear distinction between basic and non-basic goods and services and correspondingly between basic and non-basic work, and ensures that nobody will have to work more than the minimum required for meeting the basic needs of all citizens, which, unlike Parecon [participatory economics], in ID are met in full. It is up to the individual citizen to decide on whether she will work more, so that she would cover also non-basic needs, or not. This implies that the minimum number of hours that a citizen has to offer is much less than the corresponding ‘average’ hours in Parecon. Furthermore, it is up to each individual citizen to decide if, and for how long, she will work above this minimum number of hours, in contrast to Parecon where these decisions are not left to the individual but are taken at the federal level. Also, whereas in Parecon, the rate of remuneration for all work is determined exclusively by ‘objective’ criteria (number of hours and intensity of effort, also ‘objectively’ assessed) in ID, the rate of remuneration for non-basic work is co-determined by objective criteria (number of hours worked) and subjective preferences and criteria, as they affect the index of desirability and the ‘prices’ of non-basic goods and services.” [Takis Fotopoulos, “Participatory Economics (Parecon) and Inclusive Democracy.” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. Volume 1, number 2, January 2005. Pages 1-23.]

“… the unifying element of neo-nationalists is their struggle for national sovereignty, which they (rightly), see as disappearing in the era of globalization. Even when their main immediate motive is the fight against immigration, indirectly their fight is against globalization, as they realize that it is the opening of all markets, including the labor markets, particularly within economic unions like the EU [European Union], which is the direct cause of their own unemployment or low-wage employment, as well as of the deterioration of the welfare state, given that the elites are not prepared to expand social expenditure to accommodate the influx of immigrants.” [Takis Fotopoulos, “Austrian Elections, Globalization, the Massive Rise of Neo-Nationalism and the Bankruptcy of the Left.” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy: A theoretical journal published by the International Network for Inclusive Democracy. Volume 12, numbers 1/2, winter–summer 2016. Pages 63-75.]

“Inclusive democracy is a new conception of democracy, which, using as a starting point the classical definition of it, expresses democracy in terms of direct political democracy, economic democracy (beyond the confines of the market economy and state planning), as well as democracy in the social realm and ecological democracy. In short, inclusive democracy is a form of social organisation which re-integrates society with economy, polity and nature. The concept of inclusive democracy is derived from a synthesis of two major historical traditions, the classical democratic and the socialist, although it also encompasses radical green, feminist, and liberation movements in the [Global] South. Within the problematique of the inclusive democracy project, it is assumed that the world, at the beginning of the new millennium, faces a multi-dimensional crisis (economic, ecological, social, cultural and political) which is caused by the concentration of power in the hands of various elites, as a result of the establishment, in the last few centuries, of the system of market economy, representative democracy and the related forms of hierarchical structure. In this sense, an inclusive democracy, which involves the equal distribution of power at all levels, is seen not as a utopia (in the negative sense of the word) but as perhaps the only way out of the present crisis.” [The Editorial Committee, “What is Inclusive Democracy?: The contours of Inclusive Democracy.” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy: A theoretical journal published by the International Network for Inclusive Democracy. Volume 1, number 1, October 2004. Pages 1-9.]

“In view of the pressing need for organization, I believe that it is time for anarchists everywhere to adopt the ideas outlined in the inclusive democracy project, which contains the blueprint for a future anarchical society based on the principles of direct political, economic, social and ecological democracy. The theoretical work carried out in the framework of inclusive democracy is, in my mind, the only scheme for an anarchist organization of society which addresses our contemporary problems and needs. The purpose of the Inclusive Democracy project is to propose an alternative model of social organization that eliminates all forms of institutionalized power and oppression from the social realm. The only way to accomplish this and also to ensure that new forms of oppression do not arise to replace the old ones, is to develop and build the institutional preconditions for the equal distribution of all forms of political, economic, cultural and social power among the citizenry, along with a solid philosophical/theoretical foundation that is needed to change the corresponding social mentality. By introducing the idea of a confederation of popular assemblies operating on the principle of direct democracy, the social ideal of autonomy is revived once again and becomes relevant to our time. In this form of organization, each individual citizen is invested with equal political power residing in his / her institutional ability to contemplate, deliberate and decide along with his/her peers on the type of laws which govern his society. However, only by participating in the institutional collectivity of the assembly does the individual citizen become sovereign, meaning that he becomes able to enact legislation.” [Panos Drakos, “Anarchists and the Alternative of Inclusive Democracy.” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. Volume 7, number 2/3, summer/autumn 2011. Pages 1-16.]

“To understand contemporary Platformism it is important to first understand the context in which those ideas have developed as an independent tradition within the anarchist movement. Following counter-revolution in Russian in the wake of the October revolution, two strains of thought emerged from Russian and Ukrainian exiles on the perceived failures of the anarchist movement in those countries. For the Dielo Truda group it was the lack of organisational principles that had led to the general weakness and lack of influence of anarchist ideas. The seminal contribution of the Platform document was, therefore, to stress the importance of tactical and theoretical unity and a shared understanding of theory and goals across any future anarchist organisation. The Platform also argued for the primacy of class-struggle anarchism, indeed, that anarchism as a political philosophy owed its origins in the struggle of working people. Platformists, consequently, argue that anything other than this is a recipe for disunity and organisational paralysis as different tendencies struggle to reconcile their own values into the common practice of the organisation.” [Karl Klien. Contemporary Platformism: A Critical Study. Sheffield, England: Outrages Press. 2010. Page 8.]

“Platformists … take far more seriously the challenge that working class activists face in terms of the authoritarian and reformist tendencies faced in everyday organising. Often anarchists will retreat into a scene either out of a desire for organisational purity, in order to better embody the ideals and practices they advocate, or simply through lack of an alternative. In reality, until there is a revolutionary reconstruction of our current society, there can be no space untouched by the influence of capitalism, patriarchy, hetero-normativity and the State. These things permeate every aspect of our lives, at work, in the homes, even amongst partners and within friendship groups. The response should not be to retreat, but to strengthen our ideals through action towards the society we hope to create. The reality is that there is no perfect or pure struggle. Everywhere anarchists will face reformists and authoritarians (from the Left and Right) who will attempt to control or subdue struggles. Individuals involved in these struggles will also often exhibit contradictory ideas, or have ideas that may seem to conflict with those we wish to advocate (many people are nationalist, or religious, for example). Against this, Platformists argue that we need to be well organised, we need to have confidence in our own ideas and we need to act on a common programme. Being an organised anarchist means having trust in your comrades, being able to put forward a coherent strategy and embodying a common set of ideals that inspires others to do the same.” [Karl Klien. Contemporary Platformism: A Critical Study. Sheffield, England: Outrages Press. 2010. Pages 12-13.]

“To understand contemporary Platformism it is important to first understand the context in which those ideas have developed as an independent tradition within the anarchist movement. Following counter-revolution in Russian in the wake of the October revolution, two strains of thought emerged from Russian and Ukrainian exiles on the perceived failures of the anarchist movement in those countries. For the Dielo Truda group it was the lack of organisational principles that had led to the general weakness and lack of influence of anarchist ideas. The seminal contribution of the Platform document was, therefore, to stress the importance of tactical and theoretical unity and a shared understanding of theory and goals across any future anarchist organisation. The Platform also argued for the primacy of class-struggle anarchism, indeed, that anarchism as a political philosophy owed its origins in the struggle of working people. Platformists, consequently, argue that anything other than this is a recipe for disunity and organisational paralysis as diff erent tendencies struggle to reconcile their own values into the common practice of the organisation.” [Karl Klien. Contemporary Platformism: A Critical Study. Sheffield, England: Outrages Press. 2010. Page 8.]

“The principle of the enslavement and exploitation of the masses through force lies at the root of modern society. All areas of society – economics, politics, social relations – rely on class violence, whose official organs are state bodies, the police, the army and the courts. Everything in this society, from each individual factory right up to the entire political system of the state, is nothing but a fortress of capital, where the workers are forever being monitored, and where special forces are on constant alert to crush any movement of the workers that may threaten the foundations of the present society or as much as disturb its tranquillity.” [Nestor Makhno, Ida Mett, Piotr Archinov, Valevsky, Linsky, Workers Cause (Dielo Truda) Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, Maria Isidine, Errico Malatesta, Pieter Archinov, Jeff Shantz & P. J. Lilley, Alan MacSimoin, Nick Heath, Nestor McNab, and the Anarkismo editorial group, “Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft), 1926.” Nestor Makhno Archive, translator. Rome, Italy: Nestor Makhno Archive. 1989. PDF file. No pagination.]

“… like most platformists (and like authoritarians in general), [Alexandre] Skirda considers many important historical anarchist ideas and criticisms of organization to be impractical or inefficient because under free self-organization there is nothing to compel anarchists to fall into line as a disciplined mass of followers under a unitary ideology at the call of their leadership. Like too many organizationalists he prefers to condemn any anarchists who balk at attempts to discipline and control them, ridiculing their refusals to subordinate their own judgments for those of more-or-less democratic processes or less-than-transparent organizational directives.” [Jason McQuinn. “Facing the Enemy”: A platformist interpretation of the history of anarchist organization. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 2.]

“This essay on the foundations of the authority of the state marks a stage in the development of my concern with problems of political authority and moral autonomy. When I first became deeply interested in the subject, I was quite confident that I could find a satisfactory justification for the traditional democratic doctrine to which I rather unthinkingly gave my allegiance. Indeed, during my first year as a member of the Columbia University Philosophy Department, I taught a course on political philosophy in which I boldly announced that I would formulate and then solve the fundamental problem of political philosophy. I had no trouble formulating the problem — roughly speaking, how the moral autonomy of the individual can be made compatible with the legitimate authority of the state. I also had no trouble refuting a number of supposed solutions which had been put forward by various theorists of the democratic state. But midway through the semester, I was forced to go before my class, crestfallen and very embarrassed, to announce that I had failed to discover the grand solution.

“At first, as I struggled with this dilemma, I clung to the conviction that a solution lay just around the next conceptual corner. When I read papers on the subject to meetings at various universities, I was forced again and again to represent myself as searching for a theory which I simply could not find. Little by little, I began to shift the emphasis of my exposition. Finally — whether from philosophical reflection, or simply from chagrin — I came to the realization that I was really defending the negative rather than looking for the positive. My failure to find any theoretical justification for the authority of the state had convinced me that there was no justification. In short, I had become a philosophical anarchist.”

[Robert Paul Wolff. In Defense of Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1970. Page 3.]

“If autonomy and authority are genuinely incompatible, only two courses are open to us. Either we must embrace philosophical anarchism and treat all governments as non-legitimate bodies whose commands must be judged and evaluated in each instance before they are obeyed; or else, we must give up as quixotic the pursuit of autonomy in the political realm and submit ourselves (by an implicit promise) to whatever form of government appears most just and beneficent at the moment. (I cannot resist repeating yet again that if we take this course, there is no universal or a priori reason for binding ourselves to a democratic government rather than to any other sort. In some situations, it may be wiser to swear allegiance to a benevolent and efficient dictatorship than to a democracy which imposes a tyrannical majority on a defenseless minority. And in those cases where we have sworn to obey the rule of the majority, no additional binding force will exist beyond what would be present had we promised our allegiance to a king!)” [Robert Paul Wolff. In Defense of Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1970. Pages 32-33.]

“[Robert Paul] Wolff’s philosophical anarchist critique of the state is actually …, as I am interpreting it, against the view that the citizen is strictly bound to obey laws just in so as they are laws. The essence of the opposed view, as I see it, towards laws as such, as distinct whether it is prescribed by one is to do what one is told is a strict one; it attaches if at all, only in the case bound to obey laws just in so far as they are laws. The essence of this opposed view, as I see it, is the claim that citizens have a special obligation towards laws as such, as distinct from an obligation to do a certain thing whether it is prescribed by law or not. The nature of this obligation is that one is to do what one is told to do because it is mandated by law. The obligation is a strict one; it attaches to all laws as the rule and can be overridden, if at all, only in the case where a special exception can be made out.” [Rex Martin, “Wolff’s Defence of Philosophical Anarchism.” The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-). Volume 24, number 95, April 1974. Pages 140-149.]

“Philosophical anarchism—as opposed to the ‘political’ anarchism we find in writes such as [Mikhail] Bakunin, [Peter] Kropotkin, [Emma] Goldman, and others—is the position that maintains that either there are, a priori, no possible, or there are or have never been, a posteriori, any legitimate states. Robert Paul Wolff’s work is an example of the ‘a priori’ argument for philosophical anarchism. Wolff argues that the obligation to be an autonomous individual is incompatible with political obligations to a legitimate state because to be autonomous is to act only on those reasons that one can affirm as good reasons. However, to obey an authority is to ‘surrender’ one’s judgment and obey another simply because of their authoritative position. Thus, one cannot autonomously obey authority. From the moment the argument emerged in book form it was quickly challenged and for many, including some anarchists, the a priori approach is a dead end ….” [Jeremy Arnold, “Philosophical anarchism and the paradox of politics.” European Journal of Political Theory. Volume 15, number 3, July 2016. Pages 293-311.]

“The argument challenging slavery that Aristotle preserves has a ramification that its exponents, whoever they were, may not have noticed. It contains the seeds of philosophical anarchism. The conclusion of the argument is inferred from two assertions about slavery: that there is no difference by nature between a master and a slave, and that the rule of a master over a slave rests on force. Now, the very same things can be plausibly maintained about rulers and subjects in a political community: there is no difference by nature between a ruler and a subject, and political rule rests on force. Thus, by parify of reasoning political rule is unjust. A wholesale challenge of political authority is but a short step from the wholesale challenge of slavery.” [David Keyt, “Aristotle and Anarchism.” The Reason Papers. Volume 18, fall 1993. Pages 133-152.]

“When William James claims that pragmatists are happy-go-lucky anarchists he points toward the skeptical, non-conformist spirit of the American philosophical tradition. This tradition includes skepticism about absolutist schemes, suspicion of authority, and a critique of institutions that might be described as a form of philosophical anarchism. Philosophical anarchism – as a philosophical theory about political reality – is not committed to a practical political agenda and it is not aimed at establishing a party or movement. Philosophical anarchism develops from a critical application of ideals of justice, maintaining that actual political systems often fail to live up to the standards of the ideal theory of political life. One source for skepticism toward political authority can be found in John Locke’s political theory, which provided the philosophical basis for American revolutionary action against the British colonial government. But Locke and the American revolutionaries were not anarchists. They emphasized the importance of reconstituting a post-revolutionary government based on the consent of the governed. Nonetheless, Locke has been interpreted by John Simmons as pointing in the direction of what he identifies as ‘philosophical anarchism.’” [Andrew Fiala, “Political Skepticism and Anarchist Themes in the American Tradition.” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy. Volume 2, 2013. Pages 90-104.]

“The analysis of human needs also provides the basis for [Peter] Kropotkin’s critique of capitalism and the state. First, Kropotkin argues that capitalism, supported by the state, reorients material life such that it caters to the needs of the rich: rather than providing well-being for all of humanity, production becomes focused on producing luxury items for the wealthy – and by extension, for wealthy countries like our own. Second, he explains that the wealth of the wealthy ultimately derives from the poverty of the poor. Only because people are allowed to suffer such profound material destitution can the capitalist compel them to become labourers, paying them a meagre wage that allows them barely to subsist. Third, one of the alibis that the state employs to justify its existence is its monopoly over the activity of care. The state eliminates autonomous institutions of mutual aid, replacing them with various forms of charity, welfare and health care. While any form of care is significant and should be defended, the care function of the state allows it to mask the fact that the state exists as the institution that facilitates the domination of the rich and powerful and abets the immiseration of the poor and subjugated.

“Despite the efforts of the state to monopolize caring, anarchists have persevered in the effort to create a society based on mutual aid. The revolutionary significance of an anarchism based on nurturance can be observed in both institutional and spontaneous settings. Anarchist groups such as Food Not Bombs organize to feed the hungry; the Really Really Free Market organizes to provide a space for free exchange of goods; the Icarus Project organizes to help people with psychological difficulties to give each other support and therapy; various squatting initiatives help people to find shelter.”

[Mitchell Cowen Verter. Undoing patriarchy, subverting politics: anarchism as a practice of care. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2013. Pages 5-6.]

“Marxism is based on economics; anarchism on biology. Marxism still clings to an antiquated darwinism, and sees history and politics as illustrations of a struggle for existence between social classes. Anarchism does not deny the importance of such economic forces, but it insists that there is something still more important, the consciousness of an overriding human solidarity.…

“Freedom, says the marxist, is the knowledge of necessity. Freedom, says [Friedrich] Engels, ‘consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature which is founded on knowledge of natural necessity it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development. The only thing wrong with this definition is that it is too narrow. The chick that is pecking its way out of its shell has no knowledge of natural necessity only a spontaneous instinct to behave in a way that will secure it freedom. It is an important distinction because it is the distinction underlying the marxist and the anarchist philosophies. From the anarchist point of view it is not sufficient to control ourselves and external nature; we must allow for spontaneous developments. Such opportunities occur only in an open society; they cannot develop in a closed society such as the marxists have established in Russia. There is also to be observed in Engels and Marx an essential confusion between freedom and liberty: what they mean by freedom is political liberty, man’s relations to his economic environment; freedom is the relation of man to the total life process.…

“If finally you ask me whether there is any necessary connection between this philosophy and anarchism, I would reply that in my opinion anarchism is the only political theory that combines an essentially revolutionary and contingent attitude with a philosophy of freedom. It is the only militant libertarian doctrine left in the world, and on its diffusion depends the progressive evolution of human consciousness and of humanity itself.”

[Herbert Read. Existentialism, Marxism and Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1949. Pages 9-11.]

“How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world’s best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr Rubiner, dada Mr Korrodi. Dada Mr Anastasius Lilienstein. In plain language: the hospitality of the Swiss is something to be profoundly appreciated. And in questions of aesthetics the key is quality.

“I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuchsgang Goethe. Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible, and [Friedrich] Nietzsche. Dada m’dada. Dada mhm dada da. It’s a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don’t want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people’s inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation is seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr Schulz’s words are only two and a half centimetres long.

“It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat meows … Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn’t let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers’ hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words.”

[Hugo Ball. Dada Manifesto: Read at the first public by Dada soiree, Zurich, July 14, 1916. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1916. Page 2.]

“They have cubed paintings of the primitives, cubed Negro sculptures, cubed violins, cubed guitars, cubed the illustrated newspapers, cubed shit, and the profiles of young girls, how they must cube money!!! Dada itself wants nothing, nothing, nothing, it’s doing something so that the public can say: ‘We understand nothing, nothing, nothing.’ The Dadaists are nothing, nothing, nothing-certainly they will come to nothing, nothing, nothing.” [Francis Picabia. Dada Manifesto. 1920. Unsourced one–page PDF file.]

“We have thrown out the cry-baby in us. Any infiltration of this kind is candied diarrhea. To encourage this act is to digest it. What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever beyond understanding. Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong. It draws the threads of notions, words, in their formal exterior, toward illusory ends and centers. Its chains kill, it is an enormous centipede stifling independence. Married to logic, art would live in incest, swallowing, engulfing its own tail, still part of its own body, fornicating within itself, and passion would become a nightmare tarred with protestantism, a monument, a heap of ponderous gray entrails. But the suppleness, enthusiasm, even the joy of injustice, this little truth which we practice innocently and which makes its beautiful: we are subtle and our fingers are malleable and slippery as the branches of that sinuous, almost liquid plant; it defines our soul, say the cynics. That too is a point of view; but all flowers are not sacred, fortunately, and the divine thing in us is to call to anti-human action. I am speaking of a paper flower for the buttonholes of the gentlemen who frequent the ball of masked life, the kitche n of grace, white cousins lithe or fat. They traffic with whatever we have selected. The contradiction and unity of poles in a single toss can be the truth. If one absolutely insists on uttering this platitude, the appendix of a libidinous, malodorous morality. Morality creates atrophy like every plague produced by intelligence. The control of morality and logic has inflicted us with impassivity in the presence of policemen who are the cause of slavery, putrid rats infecting the bowels of the bourgeoisie which have infected the only luminous clean corridors of glass that remained open to artists.” [Tristan Tzara. Dada Manifesto. 1918. Unsourced one–page PDF file.]

“To launch a manifesto you have to want: A. B. & C., and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3, work yourself up and sharpen your wings to conquer and circulate lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout, swear, organize prose into a form that is absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its neplus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life in the same way as the latest apparition of a harlot proves the essence of God. His existence had already been proved by the accordion, the landscape and soft words. To impose one’s A. B. C. is only natural—and therefore regrettable. Everyone does it in the form of a crystalbluff-Madonna, or a monetary system, or pharmaceutical preparations, a naked leg being the invitation to an ardent and sterile Spring. The love of novelty is a pleasant sort of cross, it’s evidence of a naive don’t-give-a-damn attitude, a passing, positive, sign without rhyme or reason. But this need is out of date, too. By giving art the impetus of supreme simplicity—novelty—we are being human and true in relation to innocent pleasures; impulsive and vibrant in order to crucify boredom. At the lighted crossroads, alert, attentive. lying in wall for years, in the forest. I am writing a manifesto and there’s nothing I want, and yet I’m saying certain things, and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am against principles (quantifying measures of the moral value of every phrase-too easy; approximation was invented by the impressionists). I’m writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, in one singles fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither for nor against them, and I won’t explain myself because I hate common sense.” [Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto.” Barbara Wright, translator. Dada Performance. Mel Gordon, editor. New York: Paj Publications. 1987. Pages 45-51.]

“The term ‘Neo-Dada’ was first used in 1958 in Art News in order to characterise ‘a movement among young American artists to turn to a sort of neo-Dada – pyrotechnic or lyric, earnest but sly, unaggressive ideologically but covered with esthetic spikes.’ It was quickly picked up by Newsweek, Time, New Yorker, etc. who used it to describe a variety of works that eschewed the stifling conventions of abstract art and the exuberant emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism. Neo-Dada was not – as the name might indicate – a recycling of avant-garde strategies from the pre-war period, but a response to the new socioeconomic and cultural realities of a post-war urban environment – a civilisation that could not be adequately depicted, or even atmospherically captured, with the means of abstract art. For this reason, the term was actually a misnomer, merely based on the fact that the artists operated with figurative and realistic means of representation that had been shunned and practically eliminated in Late-Modernist art. Many artists, understandably, rejected the term, but, nonetheless, there is evidence that the theory and practice of prewar Dada was known to them and that these historical models reenforced their view that abstraction was not the be-all and end-all of Modern art.” [Günter Berghaus, “Neo-Dada Performance Art.” Neo-Avant-Garde. David Hopkins, editor. Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and New York: Editions Rodopi B.V. 2006. Pages 75-96.]

“ISIDORE ISOU Believes in the potential elevation beyond WORDS; wants the development of transmissions where nothing is lost in the process; offers a verb equal to a shock. By the overload of expansion the forms leap up by themselves.

“ISIDORE ISOU Begins the destruction of words for letters.

“ISIDORE ISOU Wants letters to pull in among themselves all desires.

“ISIDORE ISOU Makes people stop using foregone conclusions, words.

“ISIDORE ISOU Shows another way out between WORDS and RENUNCIATION: LETTERS. He will create emotions against language, for the pleasure of the tongue.

“It consists of teaching that letters have a destination other than words.

“ISOU Will unmake words into their letters.

“Each poet will integrate everything into Everything

“Everything must be revealed by letters.

“POETRY CAN NO LONGER BE REMADE.”

[Isidore Isou. Manifesto Of Letterist Poetry: A Commonplaces about Words. 1942. Web. No pagination.]

“Kabbalistic permutations were applied in the literary avant-garde by French lettrism. Lettrism found an alternative to language in a quasi-language called hypergraphics (hypergraphie). ‘Quasi’ refers here to having some but not all features of language. For instance, lettrism utilized both letter permutations and invented signs, aiming at ‘unmediated communication’ and seeking to overcome not only ordinary language but also conceptual thinking ….” [Sami Sjöberg, “Mysticism of Immanence: Lettrism, Sprachkritik, and the Immediate Message.” Partial Answers. Volume 11, number 1, January 2013. Pages 53-69.]

“By considering their mutual interest concerning the hidden divine affirmed as god, [Isidore] Isou observes the utilisation of shared textual techniques (permutations, gematria) as well as a similar attitude to language. According to their view, language should be unconstrained by conventions and functions such as naming and objectification, even at the risk of rendering language anti-rational. Such a preference evokes language mysticism, which examines the limits of language and cognition. For instance, Kabbalah is grounded on the idea of the Torah allegedly containing hidden meanings in addition to its explicit meaning. Moreover, the secrecy regarding the hidden knowledge is an essential overarching feature between lettrism and Kabbalah, particularly with reference to a messianic framework.” [Sami Sjöberg, “Writing in secret: kabbalistic language mysticism and messianic teleology in lettrism.” Neohelicon. Volume 39, number 2, December 2012. Pages 305-319.]

“Now that surrealism has lost its combative character and is regarded by many French people as an outdated fetish, ‘lettrism’ occupies the literary headlines. It yields not at all to its predecessor in its ability to excite public opinion. The disintegration of speech, of the verbe, which was the work of surrealism, was bound to bring about the disintegration of the mot. Lettrism ushered in the atomic age of poetry. Its basic device is the assembling of letters for the purpose of imitating sounds and of making images perceptible in them selves. It seems, unfortunately, to be the only logical heritage of surrealism.” [Jacques Allamand, “The Genealogy of Lettrism.” Julia Bowe, translator. Poetry. Volume 71, number 3, December 1947. Pages 141-144.]

“… because of their concepts of standardization, Functionalist Rationalists believed that it was possible to attain ideal, definitive forms of the different objects useful to people. Developments to date have shown that this static conception was mistaken. We must arrive at a dynamic conception of forms, we must face the fact that all human forms are in a constant state of transformation; where the Rationalists went wrong was in not understanding that the only way of avoiding the anarchy of change is to become aware of the laws governing transformation and to put them to use.” [Asger Jorn, “Architecture for Life.” Potlatch: Information Bulletin of the French Section of the Lettrist International. Number 15, December 22nd, 1954. No pagination.]

“Lettrism arose when the Romanian artist Isodore Isou arrived in Paris shortly after World War Two with a suitcase full of manuscripts and a megalomaniacal artistic project comprising poetry, painting, film, theatre, music, and so on. According to Isou, it was time to honour the destruction of the artwork that had been undertaken by radical modern art. A new life should now be constructed on the ruins of the old one. Isou had developed a theory of history based on the idea that what drives history forward is the will to create. Creation makes the world possible, makes the world exist. The sense of human action was to create oneself and the world. Through the act of creation man became God, according to Isou, who thus logically called himself the new Messiah. In other words, Isou and Lettrism radicalised one of the most long-lasting myths in the history of modernity: the narcissistic idea of autogenesis and complete (self-) mastery. Miraculously, modern man generates himself out of nothing.… There was nevertheless a logic in the procedure of creation: according to Isou, all forms thus went through a ‘phase amplique’ and a ‘phase ciselant’; that is, first a period when the form developed, became meaningful, created its stylistic vocabulary with which it became capable of expressing more than just its immanent content, then a period when it disintegrated, imploded, and thus began to concentrate on the forms and techniques of the medium itself.” [Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, “The Situationist International, Surrealism, and the Difficult Fusion of Art and Politics.” Oxford Art Journal. Volume 27, number 3, 2004. Pages 367-387.]

“The Lettriste Movement was launched in post-war Paris by the Romanian Isidore Isou (born Jean-Isidore Goldstein, 1925) and the Frenchman Gabriel Pomerand (born Paris, 1926). From its inception the movement was associated with controversy. On the occasion of the first public presentation of Lettrisme (January 8ᵗʰ 1946), the Russian poet Iliazd [Georgian, ილიაზდ, Iliazd] organised a counter-event – at which he demonstrated that there were numerous precedents for what Isou termed Lettrisme. 1946 also saw Isou interrupting a lecture on Dada by Michel Leiris at the Vieux-Colombier Theatre, so that he could read his own poetry; and the publication of the first (and only) issue of ‘The Lettriste Dictatorship.’” [Stewart Home. The Assault on Culture: Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War. Edinburgh, Scotland: AK Press. 1991. Page 12.]

“Anarcho-primitivism (a.k.a. radical primitivism, antiauthoritarian primitivism, the anti-civilization movement, or just, primitivism) is a shorthand term for a radical current that critiques the totality of civilization from an anarchist perspective, and seeks to initiate a comprehensive transformation of human life. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as anarcho-primitivism or anarcho-primitivists. Fredy Perlman, a major voice in this current, once said, ‘The only -ist name I respond to is “cellist.”’ Individuals associated with this current do not wish to be adherents of an ideology, merely people who seek to become free individuals in free communities in harmony with one another and with the biosphere, and may therefore refuse to be limited by the term ‘anarchoprimitivist’ or any other ideological tagging. At best, then, anarcho-primitivism is a convenient label used to characterise diverse individuals with a common project: the abolition of all power relations — e.g., structures of control, coercion, domination, and exploitation — and the creation of a form of community that excludes all such relations. So why is the term anarcho-primitivist used to characterise this current? In 1986, the circle around the Detroit paper Fifth Estate indicated that they were engaged in developing a ‘critical analysis of the technological structure of western civilization[,] combined with a reappraisal of the indigenous world and the character of primitive and original communities. In this sense we are primitivists…’ The Fifth Estate group sought to complement a critique of civilization as a project of control with a reappraisal of the primitive, which they regarded as a source of renewal and anti-authoritarian inspiration. This reappraisal of the primitive takes place from an anarchist perspective, a perspective concerned with eliminating power relations. Pointing to ‘an emerging synthesis of post-modern anarchy and the primitive (in the sense of original), Earth-based ecstatic vision,’ the Fifth Estate circle indicated: We are not anarchists per se, but pro-anarchy, which is for us a living, integral experience, incommensurate with Power and refusing all ideology… Our work on the FE [Fifth Estate] as a project explores possibilities for our own participation in this movement, but also works to rediscover the primitive roots of anarchy as well as to document its present expression. Simultaneously, we examine the evolution of Power in our midst in order to suggest new terrains for contestations and critique in order to undermine the present tyranny of the modern totalitarian discourse — that hyper-reality that destroys human meaning, and hence solidarity, by simulating it with technology. Underlying all struggles for freedom is this central necessity: to regain a truly human discourse grounded in autonomous, intersubjective mutuality and closely associated with the natural world. The aim is to develop a synthesis of primal and contemporary anarchy, a synthesis of the ecologically-focussed, non-statist, anti-authoritarian aspects of primitive lifeways with the most advanced forms of anarchist analysis of power relations. The aim is not to replicate or return to the primitive, merely to see the primitive as a source of inspiration, as exemplifying forms of anarchy. For anarcho-primitivists, civilization is the overarching context within which the multiplicity of power relations develop. Some basic power relations are present in primitive societies — and this is one reason why anarcho-primitivists do not seek to replicate these societies — but it is in civilization that power relations become pervasive and entrenched in practically all aspects of human life and human relations with the biosphere. Civilization — also referred to as the megamachine or Leviathan — becomes a huge machine which gains its own momentum and becomes beyond the control of even its supposed rulers. Powered by the routines of daily life which are defined and managed by internalized patterns of obedience, people become slaves to the machine, the system of civilization itself. Only widespread refusal of this system and its various forms of control, revolt against power itself, can abolish civilization, and pose a radical alternative. Ideologies such as Marxism, classical anarchism and feminism oppose aspects of civilization; only anarcho-primitivism opposes civilization, the context within which the various forms of oppression proliferate and become pervasive — and, indeed, possible. Anarcho-primitivism incorporates elements from various oppositional currents — ecological consciousness, anarchist anti-authoritarianism, feminist critiques, Situationist ideas, zero-work theories, technological criticism — but goes beyond opposition to single forms of power to refuse them all and pose a radical alternative.” [John Moore. A Primitivist Primer. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 4-5.]

“The two-fold nature of the project outlined here remains crucial. Anarcho-primitivism crucially combines critical analysis of civilization with a reappraisal of the primitive. These two reciprocally related aspects of anarcho-primitivism are essential. One without the other remains disastrous. For anarcho-primitivism does not seek to replicate primitive lifeways. It reappraises the primitive and seeks to draw inspiration from it, but only insofar as it does not contradict the most far-reaching anarchist analysis—analyses which seek an exponential exposure of power relations in whatever form they take.…

“Anarcho-primitivism is a label and an inadequate label at that. It is more easily described than appropriately named. It includes a refusal of ideology and the racket of politics with all its power-seeking strategies. It is a process, a process of renewal and recovery. It is a mode of thought and action, a world-view, a mode of being in the sense that Hakim Bey has defined ontological anarchy. It is a refusal to go primitive, but an affirmation of the need to become primitive again.”

[John Moore, “Comin’ Home: Defining Anarcho-primitivism,” in John Moore. Anarchist Speculations: Writings by John Moore. Berkeley, California: Ardent Press. 2016. Creative Commons. Pages 26-33.]

“… the film’s [Avatar’s] logic has anarcho-primitivism stamped in every scene and on every page except for the fact that to relate the story, [James] Cameron uses the same machines, technologies and money that devastate the wilderness he tells us we need to save. And although I see the point in that if nothing is done from within the field to challenge it and to undermine its violence, the picture of the consistency and righteousness of the civilised model would remain intact and bullet-proof, this point of infiltration (a strong theme in the film itself that goes both ways: Jake infiltrates the Other and then as Other infiltrates the Civilised Alien self) of the machine still leads to the question of intent on the part of the author and on the part of the audience.” [Layla AbdelRahim. Avatar: An Anarcho-Primitivist Picture of the History of the World. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 4.]

“Anarcho-primitivists comprise a subculture and political movement that, generally, advocates hunting and gathering as the ideal human subsistence method (from the point of view of sustainable resource use) and the band as the ideal human social structure (for its features of egalitarianism). While the goal may seem improbable, a primitivist would contend that more modest goals are either undesirable or unachievable within the system. The past 10,000 years have after all been largely a history of ‘solutions’ to the problems of an agricultural society. This critique of ‘civilization’ inherently rejects less radical ideals and claims to go uniquely to the heart of all social discontent. It is multi-faceted, drawing on several traditions of thought. These include the nineteenth century social speculators, anthropology of hunter-gatherers, situationism, anarchism, radical (deep) ecology, and anti-technological philosophy. The potential problem of implementation is largely solved by a growing consensus that an end to ‘economic growth’ is fast approaching, making revolutionary change inevitable. The direction of that change is the focus of anarcho-primitivist interest.” [Anonymous. What is Anarcho-Primitivism? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Page 3.]

“Unfortunately for anarchists, plunging into the primitivist miasma has become necessary. Over the past few decades, primitivists have successfully assimilated themselves into the anarchist movement. Within the U.S., their influence has grown so strong that anarchists can no longer afford to ignore it. The corporate media, in its infinite wisdom, has often decided to present primitivism as ‘the new anarchism,’ blissfully ignoring the classical strand of anarchist thought that agitates for worker and community control within a stateless society. Unfortunately, this generous free advertising ensures that many new members of the anarchist movement will arrive through primitivism’s feral gates.” [Brian Oliver Sheppard. Anarchism vs. Primitivism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2003. Page 4.]

“Reform or radicalism?

“Radicalism rejects current power systems entirely and understands reform as only a delay of these system’s collapse. We can see that capitalism is doomed, the system cannot sustain itself and, left to it’s own devices, it will quickly collapse. Unfortunately, reformers do not allow that collapse to happen. Making capitalism more humane or tolerable only secures it’s continued existence.

“There are some issues where radical ideology confronts reality. First, the ideology most likely to speed capitalism’s collapse is not anarchism, it’s [American far-right] libertarianism. Blind free-market policy making has always increased economic instability and if fully embraced will produce almost immediate collapse. Given this observable fact, a crafty anti-capitalist political posture is not to idealize left-wing revolutionaries, but to fake a libertarian pose and work for free unrestrained and doomed capitalism. The second issue is, this whole ‘destroy capitalism, no questions asked’ reasoning only holds up when coupled with the belief that capitalism is the worst system imaginable. Unfortunately, it seems entirely possible that when the capitalist house of cards falls we'll find ourselves in a parochial war zone of neo-feudal mysticism, overt fascism or totalitarian state socialism. Reform might buy some time to help us avoid these results.”

[Ben Turk. Ulysses’ Crewmen: An Anarchist Play. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 25.]

“Street art in its deepest and more obscure form blends with the most radical squat and anarchist movements. The radical movement tradition and its political and provocative graffiti slogans are blended with the most radical components of the street art culture. Many graffiti writers are connected with counter culture and anarchist movements—but in contrast with the street artists—it is like emerging from the underground and socialize, while loosing their most radical characteristics. Political activism, comic imagery, rioting spectacle and ironic slogans in an explosive mixture, inhabit the squat architecture and the streets, mainly around areas that underground cultures spring. Recent riots in Athens resulted to a wide range of street artists attack around the areas where riots took place. This tendency is highly visible by the emergence of the new media where the mixture of counter cultures and graffitistreet art is easily traceable. Fauna Nocturna Underground media center is actually a net platform, aiming to promote all aspects of the underground culture. Along with news about Greek anarchists occupying the national TV station and the squat congress in June, there are also news about rap underground concerts, photos of graffiti from around the world and providing support for recordings and video clips for graffiti/hip-hop artists.” [TK. Underground. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 20.]

“You yourself, dear [Errico] Malatesta, recognise the individual responsibility of the anarchist revolutionary. And what is more, you have lent your support to it throughout your life as a miitant. At least that is how I have understood your writings on anarchism. But you deny the necessity and usefulness of collective responsibility as regards the tendencies and actions of the anarchist movement as a whole. Collective responsibility alarms you; so you reject it.

“For myself, who has acquired the habit of fully facing up to the realities of our movement, your denial of collective responsibility strikes me not only as without basis but dangerous for the social revolution, in which you would do well to take account of experience when it comes to fighting a decisive battle against all our enemies at once. Now my lexperience of the revolutionary battles of the past leads me to believe that no matter what the order of revolutionary events may be, one needs to give out serious directives, both ideological and tactical. This means that only a collective spirit, sound and devoted to anarchism, could express the requirements of the moment, through a collectively responsible will. None of us has the right to dodge that element of responsibility. On the contrary, if it has been until now overlooked among the ranks of the anarchists, it needs now to become, for us: communist anarchists, an article of our theoretical and practical programme.”

[Errico Malatesta. The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles 1924-1931. Vernon Richards, editor. London: Freedom Press. 1995. Page 104.]

“In all circumstances, it is the duty of the Socialists, and especially of the Anarchists, to do everything that can weaken the State and the capitalist class, and to take as the only guide to their conduct the interest of Socialism; or, if they are materially powerless to act efficaciously for their own cause, at least to refuse any voluntary help to the cause of the enemy, and stand aside to save at least their principles — which means to save the future.” [Errico Malatesta. Anarchists, the War and Their Principles. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 4.]

“There have been anarchists, and there still are some, who while recognizing the need to organize today for propaganda and action, are hostile to all organizations which do not have anarchism as their goal or which do not follow anarchist methods of struggle… To those comrades it seemed that all organized forces for an objective less than radically revolutionary, were forces that the revolution was being deprived of. It seems to us instead, and experience has surely already confirmed our view, that their approach would condemn the anarchist movement to a state of perpetual sterility. To make propaganda we must be amongst the people, and it is in the workers’ associations that workers find their comrades and especially those who are most disposed to understand and accept our ideas. But even when it is possible to do as much propaganda as we wished outside the associations, this could not have a noticeable effect on the working masses. Apart from a small number of individuals more educated and capable of abstract thought and theoretical enthusiasms, the worker cannot arrive at anarchism in one leap. To become an convinced anarchist, and not in name only, they must begin to feel the solidarity that joins them to their comrades, and to learn to cooperate with others in defense of common interests and that, by struggling against the bosses and against the government that supports them, should realize that bosses and governments are useless parasites and that the workers could manage the domestic economy by their own efforts. And when the worker has understood this, he or she is an anarchist even if they do not refer to themselves as such.” [Errico Malatesta. Arguments from Errico Malatesta. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Page 12.]

“… after several bloody battles between striking workers and police in which the former were invariably the losers, someone, possibly an anarchist, possibly a hired gangster—threw a bomb at a police detachment which was attempting to disperse a mass meeting in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. This event, the first use (in America) of dynamite as a political device, led to the celebrated trial of the Chicago anarchists, who were charged, not with actually having thrown the bomb, but with having inspired the act by their inflammatory speeches and editorials. The defendants were therefore compelled to defend anarchism in general and anarchist violence in particular, rather than their behavior on the day of the bombing. This they did, resorting to the traditional argument of the revolutionary: social injustice is so extreme that actual warfare between oppressors and oppressed is both justified and inevitable. However, only one of the defendants, Louis Lingg, expressed himself frankly and directly on the subject of violence, as in favor of it; the others took rhetorical refuge in heroic generalities.” [Edward Abbey. Anarchism and the Morality of Violence. M.A. thesis. The University of New Mexico. Albuquerque, New Mexico. 1959. Page 44.]

“The revolutionary saint must give up his virtue as well as his life. Otherwise, if he commits murder without recognizing it as a crime, no mater how noble the end desired, he contradicts his own idealism, which is supposed to spring from the conviction that modern civilization is based on diffuse but systematic murder—in a word, injustice. The Chicago anarchists were either unwilling or unable to recognize their own guilt, whether direct or indirect, in the Haymarket tragedy, and thus they failed to exemplify in a complete and satisfactory manner the tragic paradox inherently a part of anarchist violence.” [Edward Abbey. Anarchism and the Morality of Violence. M.A. thesis. The University of New Mexico. Albuquerque, New Mexico. 1959. Page 46.]

“Meaningful discussion about the relevance of anarchist ideas to modern industrialized societies must first, for the sake of clarity, outline the difference between today’s “neo-anarchism” and the classical anarchism of [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon, [Peter] Kroptokin, [Errico] Malatesta and their successors. With rare exceptions one is stuck by the mediocre and superficial character of the ideas advanced by modern writers on anarchism. Instead of presenting fresh insights, there is the repetition of utopisitic ideas which the anarchist movement had long since outgrown and rejected as totally irrelevant to the problems of our increasingly complex society.

“typical bougeois [sic; bourgeois] anarchist characteristics are: Escapism: the hope that the establishment will be gradually undermined if enough people ‘cop-out’ of the system and ‘live like anarchsts in communes and other life-style institutions…’ Nechayevism: romantic glorification of conspiracy, ruthlessness, and violence in the amoral tradition of Nechayev. Boehmianism: total irresponsibility; exclusive preoccupation with one’s picturesque ‘life-style’; exhibitionism; rejection of any form of organization or self-discipline.”

[Sam Dolgoff. The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1977. Page 3.]

“The Black Flag of anarchy is a mythic image, a magic symbol of something alluring yet threatening – much like the black cat of the witch. Like any other magic symbol, it calls up different things for different people. The idea of not being governed is intoxicating, a sip of Dionysian liberation. Yet violent chaos is terrifying, and most political philosophers ever since [Thomas] Hobbes have been telling us that we cannot have anarchy without violent chaos. If we accept this claim, then we must see the anarchist as a figure of mindless destruction, half-fearful and half-ridiculous. This is exactly how the State would prefer us to see the anarchist – as a cartoon image, to be laughed at or locked up as required by circumstances.

“Pagans and witches face similar stereotypes. Portrayed either as laughable attentionseekers or evil servants of the powers of darkness, modern Pagans too often seek refuge in the respectability of mainstream society. This respectability is out of reach. To a society divided between atheists and religious fundamentalists, Paganism can only appear either silly or sinister.

“Without respectability, outside the mainstream, Paganism and witchcraft have more to offer. In ancient times, kings and emperors were terrified of the powers of witchcraft. Instead of constantly insisting that we are not a threat, perhaps we ought to become a threat – not to human beings, but to the systems of domination and extraction that currently threaten all life on earth.…

“In Spain before the Civil War, anarchism was known as ‘the Idea,’ and anarchist activists had a reputation for almost monastic austerity and self-discipline. Despite these semi-religious overtones, the majority of them were atheists: many were militantly hostile to organized religion. Today’s anarchist movement still includes many atheists, but also a large minority of religious people—including Pagans. Pagan anarchism is a reality, a fact which might have surprised many of the past adherents of ‘the Idea.’

“So what exactly is Pagan anarchism? …

“Paganism can mean a lot of different things. Many who use the word now refer to one particular type of Pagan religion loosely based on Wicca, often unaware that Pagan and Wiccan are not synonyms. There are many types of Paganism with little similarity to Wicca.

“Scholars often use the word Pagan to refer to the polytheistic religions of pre-Christian Europe, some of which were fully organized religions with State support. Many modern Pagans also use this definition, looking to ancient forms of polytheism for inspiration and attempt to reconstruct these ancient practices.

“I’m using the word in a broader sense, to refer to folk religious and magical practices focused on nature spirits, fairies, the dead and the gods. Paganism in this broader sense did not end with the Christian conversion, because it was never limited to ‘organized religion’ in the first place. Common people all over Europe continued to leave offerings for the fairies and the dead many centuries after their official conversion to Christianity. They didn’t think of themselves as Pagans in any formal sense, but continued to see the world around them filled with spirits and their daily spiritual practices reflected this worldview. They still believed in local fairy queens and fairy kings, entities that would have been understood as gods before the Christian conversion. They also retained a semi-polytheistic worldview in the veneration of saints, many of whom were not officially recognized by the church and some of whom were originally pre-Christian gods.”

[Christopher Scott Thompson. Pagan Anarchism. Gods&Radicals (location unknown). 2016. Creative Commons. Ebook edition. No pagination.]

“Lots of Pagan religions like the earth and believe in spirits, faeries, and gods of land, or in a great earth spirit or mother or goddess. That’s one of the reasons why Paganism is usually defined as an ‘earth-based’ religion.

“And who can own the land or the trees? Well, under Capitalism, the people with money and power and access to the systems that delegate and enforce private property rights. Everyone else has to stay off; in fact, Private Property demands ‘exclusion’ from the land (think No Trespassing signs…).

“And that unequal relationship to the land is essential to Capitalism, because it prevents workers from ever making a living in any other way except working for the Capitalists. …

“So, Capitalism is a system where some people get to own businesses and companies and factories (the means of production) and get out of the cycle of work, while the rest of us have to sell our time in the form of LABOR in order to survive. Doesn’t seem so fair, huh? …

“So we come to the question of why a Pagan should care about Capitalism at all. Why, after all, should a group of people worshiping gods and nature care about what sort of economic system we’ve got? To understand this, we need to look at precisely how Capitalism came about, what it requires, what it does to people and the earth, and what it will always get in the way of.…

“We Pagans are trying to re-enchant the world, to bring back the magic of the forests and the mountains. We are trying to hear and revere the wild places, the sacred forgotten places, the spirits of ocean and rivers and lakes. And yet Capitalism is always poisoning these places because it considers nothing sacred except profit, nothing holy except wealth.…

“To Re-Enchant the World, we must destroy Capitalism. And we’re not alone—indigenous peoples on every continent have been trying to do this for centuries, and it’s no surprise that they revere the earth and gods and each other in ways that Capitalism cannot abide and Capitalism must destroy.…

“The more you resist, the more you’ll be able to resist. And the more you resist, the more you’ll be able to help others resist. Too many people fear this is the only way to live, and it doesn’t help that we don’t see many examples of the millions of people trying to resist Capitalism. Inspire others, and they’ll have hope. And when others have hope, you’ll be inspired.”

[Rhyd Wildermuth. A Pagan Anti-Capitalist Primer. Pagananarch (location unknown). 2015. Ebook edition. Public domain. No pagination.]

“Neo-paganism has a fascism problem. The first European pagan tradition revival culminated in Romantic nationalism, embodied in the Revolutions of 1848, a wave of attempts to upend feudal remnants and move toward folkish nation-states. Ethnic separatism and nationalism in paganism, as well as pagan land ownership, constructed a solid foundation for European Fascists to later harness pagan motifs under “Blood and Soil” rhetoric. Contemporary European neo-paganism often appears inseparable from right-wing nationalism, with neo-völkisch movements thoroughly appropriating pagan traditions. Kind of easy when Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, and Slavic pagans all used swastika or triskelion symbols, often connected to lightning-symbolized mobile chariot warfare, eerily foreshadowing the Nazi blitzkrieg [flash warfare] (lightning-war). The Nazis rode a völkisch mysticism undercurrent, including a synthesis of Nazi and pagan symbols. It seems difficult to untangle Týr as both pagan deity of law and heroic battle, and Nazi leadership rune and SS battle sigil. And again, difficult to untangle pagan swastikas from Nazi swastikas. And although non-right-wing neo-paganisms certainly exist, all the various European neo-pagan reconstruction and revival tendencies merely attempt to resurrect the Sky-Father and Thunder-Warrior legacy I’ve already critiqued. They champion a legacy with a strong affinity for a patriarch or set of patriarchs who unify spheres of authority: the elite warleader, high priest, law-master. The ancient basis of the State, and Führer-material, surely.

“Let’s move on to another neo-pagan tendency: Wicca.…

“Wicca, largely syncretic and eclectic, nevertheless has some commonalities, originating in the 1950s with Gerald Gardner, Father of Wicca, and supporter of the UK Tory Party. Wiccans adorn themselves with the ‘Five Elements’ pentacle. Ann-Marie Gallagher illustrates it through the tree symbol, composed of Earth (soil and plant matter), Water (sap and moisture), Fire (photosynthesis and internal warmth), Air (respiration), and Spirit (connection and life). Others employed the candle symbol, with its unmelted/solid aspect (Earth), melting/ liquid aspect (Water), lit/plasma aspect (Fire), releasing/ gas aspect (Air), and phenomenon/magic aspect (Spirit). While I find some personal value in the Five Elements notion, many Wiccans allow it to emphasize abstraction and reductionism, disconnecting themselves from the multitude of real life elemental manifestations.”

[Autumn Leaves Cascade. To Rust Metallic Gods: An Anarcho-Primitivist Critique of Paganism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Page 10.]

“Like all other anarchists, individualists think the way to maximize human freedom and happiness is to abolish the state and all other involuntary relationships, organizations, and institutions. They believe that all people should be free to choose with whom they associate, what kind of work they do, how they dispose of the products of their labor, where they live, and what kinds of recreation in which they engage. The only limit on someone’s freedom of action should be the equal freedom of others to live their lives unmolested. In other words, the area in which someone may freely swing their arm ends where the nose of another person begins.

“Where individualists differ most from other anarchists is in the area of economics. Unlike communist anarchists, individualists advocate the private ownership of property and individual retention of the products of one’s labor. This means the whole product of one’s labor. Individualists reject profit as an unjust theft of the product of the labor of another, and therefore have as little in common with capitalists as they have with socialists.

“Individualists support tenure of land based on use and occupancy and believe rent is simply another form of profit-taking by the unproductive. People should have title only to the amount of land they can use and work themselves, but would be free to pool their resources in order to engage in larger scale operations for the sake of efficiency and greater productivity. The parties to such cooperative arrangements would still be entitled to the full product of their labor, thus generating no profit.”

[Joe Peacott. An Overview of Individualist Anarchist Thought: Economic Notes No. 97. London: Libertarian Alliance. 2003. Page 2.]

“Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice—man’s sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers. I have noticed that a portion of Walden which in the state of water was green will often, when frozen, appear from the same point of view blue. So the hollows about this pond will, sometimes, in the win ter, be filled with a greenish water somewhat like its own, but the next day will have frozen blue. Perhaps the blue color of water and ice is due to the light and air they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.” [Henry D. Thoreau. Walden or Life in the Woods. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1910. Pages 327-328.]

“I heartily accept the motto,—‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government; The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.” [H. D. Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government; a Lecture delivered in 1847.” Æsthetic Papers. Elizabeth P. Peabody, editor. New York: G. P. Putnam. 1849. Pages 189-211.]

“Upholding … the right of every individual to be or select his own priest, they [anarchists] likewise uphold his right to be or select his own doctor. No monopoly in theology, no monopoly in medicine. Competition everywhere and always; spiritual advice and medical advice alike to stand or fall on their own merits. And not only in medicine, but in hygiene, must this principle of liberty be followed. The individual may decide for himself not only what to do to get well, but what to do to keep well. No external power must dictate to him what he must and must not eat, drink, wear, or do.

“Nor does the Anarchistic scheme furnish any code of morals to be imposed upon the individual. ‘Mind your own business’ is its only moral law. Interference with another’s business is a crime and the only crime, and as such may properly be resisted. In accordance with this view the Anarchists look upon attempts to arbitrarily suppress vice as in themselves crimes. They believe liberty and the resultant social well-being to be a sure cure for all the vices. But they recognize the right of the drunkard, the gambler, the rake, and the harlot to live their lives until they shall freely choose to abandon them.

“In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails. The nurse and the teacher, like the doctor and the preacher, must be selected voluntarily, and their services must be paid for by those who patronize them. Parental rights must not be taken away, and parental responsibilities must not be foisted upon others.

“Even in so delicate a matter as that of the relations of the sexes the Anarchists do not shrink from the application of their principle. They acknowledge and defend the right of any man and woman, or any men and women, to love each other for as long or as short a time as they can, will, or may. To them legal marriage and legal divorce are equal absurdities. They look forward to a time when every individual, whether man or woman, shall be self-supporting, and when each shall have an independent home of his or her own, whether it be a separate house or rooms in a house with others; when the love relations between these independent individuals shall be as varied as are individual inclinations and attractions; and when the children born of these relations shall belong exclusively to the mothers until old enough to belong to themselves.”

[Benjamin Tucker. Individual Liberty. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1926. Page 15.]

“Radical individualism in nineteenth-century America is commonly called individualist anarchism. As part of this continuing ideological tradition, Liberty neither emerged from nor operated within an intellectual vacuum. The tradition from which Liberty arose centered on two fundamental themes.” [Wendy McElroy, “Benjamin Tucker, Liberty, and Individualist Anarchism.” The Independent Review. Volume II, number 3, winter 1998. Pages 421-434.]

“Stigmergy is a fancy word for systems in which a natural order emerges from the individual choices made by the autonomous components of a collective within the sphere of their own self-sovereignty. To the extent coercion skews markets by distorting the decisions of those autonomous components (individual people), it ought to be seen that a truly free market (a completely stigmergic economic system) necessarily implies anarchy, and that any authentic collectivism is necessarily delineated in its bounds by the the natural rights of the individuals composing the collective.” [Brad Spangler, “Market Anarchism as Stigmergic Socialism.” Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty. Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson, editors. Creative Commons. Brooklyn, New York: Minor Compositions imprint of Autonomedia. 2011. Pages 85-92.]

“According to [Peter] Kropotkin both Marxism and individualist (lifestyle) anarchism were one-sided, or rather lop-sided tendencies. Those who advocate some kind of rapprochement between lifestyle and social anarchism, therefore, misunderstand the nature of social anarchism (or libertarian socialism) – for a libertarian perspective is intrinsic to Kropotkin’s conception of social anarchism.” [Brian Morris, “Anarchism and the Marxist Critique of Capitalism.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 22, number 2, 2014. Pages 104-108.]

“A system of private protection, even when one protective agency is dominant in a geographical territory, appears to fall short of a state. It apparently does not provide protection for everyone in its territory, as does a state, and it apparently does not possess or claim the sort of monopoly over the use of force necessary to a state. In our earlier terminology, it apparently does not constitute a minimal state, and it apparently does not even constitute an ultraminimal state.

“These very ways in which the dominant protective agency or association in a territory apparently falls short of being a state provide the focus of the individualist anarchist’s complaint against the state. For he holds that when the state monopolizes the use of force in a territory and punishes others who violate its monopoly, and when the state provides protection for everyone by forcing some to purchase protection for others, it violates moral side constraints on how individuals may be treated. Hence, he concludes, the state itself is intrinsically immoral. The state grants that under some circumstances it is legitimate to punish persons who violate the rights of others, for it itself does so. How then does it arrogate to itself the right to forbid private exaction of justice by other nonaggressive individuals whose rights have been violated?”

[Robert Nozick. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford, England, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999. Page 51.]

“During and after World War II, theorists drew on recent developments in social theory to broaden the anarchist critique of power beyond the movement’s traditional focus on class oppression. At the same time, they learned new techniques and conceptions of resistance from groups of radical pacifists with whom they collaborated. From this milieu arose a conception of anarchism indebted to Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy that advocated individuals focusing on living their own lives in a fashion that resembled their ideals as closely as possible. These ‘practical anarchists’ sought to prefigure the world they hoped to live in rather than wait until after a revolution that now seemed impossibly far off. It was this new style of anarchism-not the classic variety that obtained before the war-that would most directly inform and inspire the movements of the 19608. As anarchist ideas contributed to mid-century pacifism, the debates of the ‘New York Intellectuals,’ and the nascent counterculture, these influences, in turn, shifted anarchism toward a middle-class constituency and promoted personal lifestyle change as a strategic priority.” [Andrew Cornell, “A New Anarchism Emerges, 1940-1954.” Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Volume 5, number 1, spring 2011. Pages 105-131.]

“At … times the two terms [anarchism and individualism] have been melted together in one name: anarchist individualism.… This philosophy can be summed up as the cult of great men and the apotheosis of genius. It would seem to us to be arguable whether the expression individualist anarchism can be used to designate such a doctrine. The qualification of anarchist, in the etymological sense, can be applied with difficulty to thinkers of the race of [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe, [Thomas] Carlyle, and [Friedrich] Nietzsche, whose philosophy seems on the contrary to be dominated by ideas of hierarchical organization and the harmonious placing of values in a series. What is more, the epithet of individualist can’t be applied with equal justice to all the thinkers we have just named. If it is appropriate for designating the egotist, nihilist and anti-idealist revolt of [Max] Stirner, it can with difficulty be applied to the Hegelian, optimist and idealist philosophy of a Carlyle, who clearly subordinates the individual to the idea.” [Georges Palante. Anarchism and Individualism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1909. Page 1.]

“The idea that ‘Another World is Possible’ is a vital motivational force behind most anarchist lifestyles. Despite some claims of individualism, some anarchist lifestyle choices embody a communal approach that seeks to instantiate this ‘other world’ in direct opposition to the individualistic lifestyles that embody the spirit of capitalism. Grassroots activisms, in the form of ‘small communities of liberation’ …, are a case in point. In this essay I will briefly revisit the meaning of lifestyle anarchism and argue that some intentional communities with an ecological ideology prefigure an alternative. I will then flip the notion of what is global on its head and argue that examples of anarchist prefiguration have real potential to transform the structural nature of capitalism as any local action is itself linked to, and enacted upon, the global stage.” [Julyan Levy. What are the global effects of anarchist lifestyle choices? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. Undated. Page 3.]

“Political liberalism abolished the inequality of masters and servants: it made people masterless, anarchic. The master was now removed from the individual, the ‘egoist,’ to become a ghost – the law or the state. Social liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, of the poor and rich, and makes people possessionless or propertyless. Property is withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly society.” [Max Stirner. The Ego and Its Own. Steven Byington (with revisions), translator. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Page 128.]

“Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are, have made you believe you are not egoists but are called to be idealists (‘good men’). Shake that off! Do not seek for freedom, which does precisely deprive you of yourselves, in ‘self-denial’; but seek for yourselves, become egoists, become each of you an almighty ego. Or, more clearly: Just recognize yourselves again, just recognize what you really are, and let go your hypocritical endeavours, your foolish mania to be something else than you are.… Religion promises me the – ‘supreme good’; to gain this I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slake them. – All your doings are unconfessed, secret, covert, and concealed egoism. But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves, that you keep secret from yourselves, hence not manifest and public egoism, consequently unconscious egoism, therefore they are not egoism, but thraldom, service, self-renunciation; you are egoists, and you are not, since you renounce egoism. Where you seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the word ‘egoist’ – loathing and contempt.” [Max Stirner. The Ego and Its Own. Steven Byington (with revisions), translator. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Page 149.]

“The difficulty in our education up till now lies, for the most part, in the fact that knowledge did not refine itself into will, to application of itself, to pure practice. The realists felt the need and supplied it, though in a most miserable way, by cultivating idea-less and fettered ‘practical men.’ Most college students are living examples of this sad turn of events. Trained in the most excellent manner, they go on training; drilled, they continue drilling. Every education, however, must be personal and stemming from knowledge, it must continuously keep the essence of knowledge in mind, namely this, that it must never be a possession, but rather the ego itself. In a word, it is not knowledge that should be taught, rather, the individual should come to self-development; pedagogy should not proceed any further towards civilizing, but toward the development of free men, sovereign characters; and therefore, the will which up to this time has been so strongly suppressed, may no longer be weakened. Do they not indeed weaken the will to knowledge, then why weaken the will to will? After all, we do not hinder man’s quest for knowledge; why should we intimidate his free will? If we nurture the former, we should nurture the latter as well.” [Max Stirner. The False Principle of Our Education: or, Humanism and Realism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 9.]

“[Max] Stirner [referring to himself in the third person] opposes this phrase ‘humanism’ with the phrase ‘egoism’: How? Do you demand of me that I should be a ‘human being,’ more precisely, I should be a ‘man’? Well! I was already a ‘human being,’ a ‘naked little human being,’ and a ‘man’ in the cradle; I am indeed that; but I am more than that, I am what I have become through me, through my development, through appropriation of the external world, of history, etc.; I am the ‘unique.’ But that’s not what you really want. You don’t want me to be an actual human being. You don’t give a damn about my uniqueness. You desire that I should be ‘the human being’ as you have depicted it, as a model for all. You want to make the ‘principle of vulgar equality’ into the norm for my life. Principle upon principle! Demand after demand! I oppose you with the principle of egoism. I only want to be myself; I despise nature, humanity and its laws, human society and its love, and I cut off all compulsory relationships with them, even that of language. To all the impressions of your duties, all the expressions of your categorical judgments, I oppose the ‘ataraxia’ of my I; I’m already quite accommodating when I make use of language, I am the ‘inexpressible.’ ‘I only show myself.’ And aren’t I as right with the terrorism of my I, which pushes back everything human in just such a way, as you with your terrorism of humanity, which immediately brands me as an ‘inhuman monster’ if I sin against your catechism, if I don’t let myself be disturbed in my self-enjoyment?” [Max Stirner. The Philosophical Reactionaries. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Page 8.]

“In his egoist anarchism theory, the German philosopher Max Stirner asserts that individuals should pursue their own self-interests in an egoistic fashion and disregard the needs of community. But at the same time, they should appreciate other egoists’ pursuance of their own self-interests and find a way to moderate their own behaviors accordingly.” [Ismail Yilmaz and Ilkay Akyay, “Individualism.” Encyclopedia of Social Deviance. Craig J. Forsyth and Heith Copes, editors. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc. 2014. Pages 367-368.]

“To Max Stirner, the Ego is the centre of the world; wherever it looks, it finds the world its own — to the extent of its power. If this Ego could appropriate the entire world, it would thereby establish its right to it. It would be the universal monopolist. Stirner does not say that he wants his liberty to be limited by the equal liberty of others; on the contrary, he believes that his freedom and Eigenheit [singularity, peculiarity, or, as translated from Stirner, ego] are bounded only by his power to attain. If Napoleon uses humanity as a football, why don’t they rebel?” [Max Baginski. Stirner: The Ego and His Own. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1907. Page 6.]

“The pursuit of excellence and the enjoyment of the goods associated with engaging in a practice are ruled out by the conditions for agency implied by Stirnerian ontology. Furthermore, adopting the view of the self presented in The Ego and Its Own commits the individual to the following principle: her choices must not be generated by belief in fixed ideas. So the proper egoist is forced to accept a source of motivation that her own theory is supposed to exclude. [Max] Stirner’s attempt to base his form of liberating individuality on the notion of an Ich [I, ego, or self] detached from its projects fails on its own terms. By insisting that the unique human subject always remain at a ‘safe’ distance from desires and fixed ideas, Stirner is committing the same sort of error as the youth he criticises in The Ego and Its Own.“ [John Jenkins, “Max Stirner’s Ontology.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies. Volume 22, number 1, February 2014. Pages 3-26.]

“A common misconception about egoism, and about the egoism of [Max] Stirner in particular, is that it is a reclusive, anti-social kind of behaviour. As far as Stirner is concerned, such commentators must have been asleep through that half of his book which is devoted to describing exactly the social interactions of an egoist, or more precisely — what social interactions are like when they are not mediated by ideals or ‘natural bonds.’

“Egoism is not anti-sociality, like some believe, but is better seen as a more mature kind of sociality.

“Stirner is a dialectical philosopher, and as such his focus is on relations. As is with relations, it often comprises three elements, the two relata, and the relation itself, and hence the famous triad is a common occurrence in dialectical philosophy. So also with Stirner.”

[Svein Olav Nyberg. The union of egoists. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Page 1.]

“Max Stirner may be an ‘egoistic anarchist’; yet both terms admit of elasticity. Stirner’s brand of egoism is distinct from most others – very different from the argument of Mandeville (and, by extension, the early political economists) that ‘private vices’ add up to ‘public benefit’; Stirner regarded the notion of public (as opposed to private) benefit as nonsensical. Stirner’s egoism, again, seems irreducible to Romantic notions of subjectivity. Stirner was a forthright foe of all teleological categories – of goals, purposes, ends, even if these are imposed upon the individual by the individual himself. Stirner denied the possibility of any political outcome of the free play of self- defined forces, and did not share the psychological determination of a [Baruch] Spinoza, a [Thomas] Hobbes or a [Claude Adrien] Helvétius. These theorists had maintained that the assertive ego could act only on its own behalf, whereas Stirner despairingly maintained that, quite to the contrary, people throughout history had submitted themselves voluntarily to what he calls ‘hierarchy’ – a sequence of oppressive, outside belief systems and institutions. All such systems and structures, Stirner insisted, had struck at individuals’ uniqueness, originality and singularity.” [Paul Thomas, “Max Stirner and Karl Marx: An Overlooked Contretemps.” Max Stirner. New York: Palgrave Macmillan imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC. 2011. Pages 113-142.]

“The deliberate stress that [Max] Stirner places on the usability of the relationships that the Unique maintains with the other only aims to emphasize how in the relationship between individual owners there is a mutual interest in the person and not, as morality and religion claim, a mutual renunciation. Real love, as opposed to idealized love, is a self-interested emotion and not an act of self-denial. In fact, ‘we want to love because we feel love, because love is pleasant to our heart and our senses, and in love for the other person we feel a higher enjoyment of ourselves.’ It is the same love for the other that leads me to ‘joyfully sacrifice for him innumerable pleasures of mine,’ to ‘give up innumerable things to see his smile blossom again,’ and to ‘put at risk for him the thing that, if he were not there, would be the dearest thing in the world to me: my life or my well-being or my freedom. Or rather my pleasure and my happiness consist precisely in the enjoyment of his happiness and pleasure.’ ‘But,’ Stirner emphasizes, ‘there is something that I don’t sacrifice to him: myself; I remain an egoist and enjoy him.’” [Massimo Passamani. Mutual Utilization: Relationship and Revolt in Max Stirner. W.L., translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 4.]

“If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my ‘emptiness.’ I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing [schöpftrische Nichts], the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.” [Max Stirner. The Ego and Its Own. Steven Byington (with revisions), translator. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Page 7.]

“I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique. In the unique one the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I concern myself for myself, the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say:

“All things are nothing to me.”

[Max Stirner. The Ego and Its Own. Steven Byington (with revisions), translator. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Page 324.]

“The phrase ‘creative nothing’ is one of the more interesting phrases found in Stirner’s masterwork ‘The Unique and Its Property’ (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum [i.e., The Ego and Its Own]). The phrase only appears twice, once in the introduction titled ‘I Have Based My Affair On Nothing,’ and again in the final chapter titled ‘The Unique One.’ What exactly is the creative nothing, or perhaps more succinctly, what did Stirner mean by the phrase ‘creative nothing’? …

“My creative nothing, is my non-conceptual immanent experience, as encountered and experienced by me in my moment-to-moment interactions and encounters with my world. It is from this nonconceptual lived experience that which I can create myself conceptually, and express myself in any conceptual manner (lingual, written, symbolic, etc) that I feel best represents my non-conceptual experience with my world.”

[Castanea Dentata. Some Thoughts on the Creative Nothing. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 1-2.]

“… these three currents — anarcho-syndicalism, libertarian communism and anarchist individualism, distinct currents but not contradictory — have nothing that makes them irreconcilable, nothing that puts them in opposition to each other, nothing that proclaims their incompatibility, nothing that can prevent them from living in harmony, or even coming together for joint propaganda and action ….

“… the existence of these three currents not only does not harm in any way or to any degree the total force of anarchism — a philosophical and social movement envisaged, and rightly so, in all its breadth, but can and logically must contribute to the overall strength of anarchism ….

“… each of these currents has its own place, its role, its mission within that broad, deep social movement that goes by the name of ‘anarchism’, whose goal is the establishment of a social environment that can assure the maximum well-being and freedom to each and every one ….

“ … in these conditions, anarchism may be compared to what in chemistry is called a compound, that is to say a substance made up of a combination of various elements.

“This particular compound is created by the combination of three elements: anarcho-syndicalism, libertarian communism and anarchist individualism.…

“This particular compound is created by the combination of three elements: anarcho-syndicalism, libertarian communism and anarchist individualism.…

“Whatever the case, these three elements — anarcho-syndicalist, libertarian communist and anarchist individualist (S.C.I.) — are made to combine with each other and, by amalgamating, go to make up what I shall call ‘The Anarchist Synthesis.’”

[Sébastien Faure. The Anarchist Synthesis. Nestor McNab, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Pages 7-8.]

“The following measures are indispensable.

“The first group consists of measures against the absence of all rights and against the ignorance which marks the Russian people. These measures include:

“The second group consists of measures against poverty:

“The third group consists of measures against the crushing of labor by capital:

“It is noteworthy that despite all the paradoxical elements of the situation that was created, the action which was being prepared was no more, for an informed observer, than the logical outcome of the combined pressure of various real factors; it was a natural ‘synthesis’ of the various elements at play.”

[Voline. The Unknown Revolution, 1917?1921. Book One. Birth, Growth and Triumph of the Revolution. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1947. Page 38.]

“It should be noted how absurd — or biased — is the reproach aimed at the Anarchists that they know only how ‘to destroy,’ and that they have no ‘positive’ constructive ideas, especially when this charge is hurled by those of the ‘left’ Discussions between the political parties of the extreme left and the Anarchists have always been about the positive and constructive tasks which are to be accomplished after the destruction of the bourgeois State (on which subject everybody is in agreement). What would be the way of building the new society then: statist, centralist, and political, or federalist, a-political, and simply social? Such was always the theme of the controversies between them; an irrefutable proof that the essential preoccupation of the Anarchists was always future construction.” [Voline. The Unknown Revolution, 1917?1921. Book Two. Bolshevism and Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1947. Page 6.]

“Peter Gavrilenko was a Gulyai-Polye peasant, an Anarchist since the 1905 Revolution, and one of the most active militants of Makhnovism. He played a part of the highest importance, as commander of the Third Corps, in the defeat of the Denikinist troops in June, 1919. In 1921, he performed the functions of chief of staff of the Crimean Army. After [Pyotr Nikolayevich] Wrangel’s destruction, he was treacherously seized by the Bolsheviks, like [Simon] Karetnik, and shot at Melitopol [a Ukrainian city].” [Voline. The Unknown Revolution, 1917?1921. Book Three. Struggle for the Real Social Revolution. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1947. Page 157.]

“This current of ideas [nihilism] had above all a philosophical and moral character. Its field of influence always remained very small, having never extended beyond the intellectual stratum. Its style was always personal and peaceful, but that did not prevent it, however, from being very lively, imbued with a great breath of individual revolt and guided by a dream of happiness for all mankind. The movement it had provoked, contented itself with the literary domain and especially that of morals. But in these two areas, the movement did not shrink before the last logical conclusions, that it not only formulated, but sought to apply individually, as a rule of conduct.” [Voline. Nihilism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1925–1934. Page 1.]

“The underlying factor in the successes of the fascists and the powerlessness of the forces of emancipation is, as I see it, the poisonous notion of dictatorship per se. I would even go further. There is a notion so widespread that it has all but turned into an axiomatic truth. Millions upon millions, even today, would be astounded to find it called into question. Better still: a goodly number of anarchists and syndicalists too see nothing suspect in it. Speaking for myself, I regard it as entirely wrong-headed. Now, every false notion embraced as a fact poses a great danger to the cause it affects. The notion in question is as follows: in order to win in the struggle and achieve their emancipation, the toiling masses have to be guided and led by some ‘elite,’ some ‘enlightened minority,’ by ‘far-seeing’ men on a level higher than the masses.” [Voline. Red Fascism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1934. Page 3.]

“It was the first current [Bolshevism] that carried the day. The masses gave their confidence and their assistance to the Bolshevist Party. They assisted it in conquering power in the hope that this new ‘proletarian’ government would finally know how to solve the problems of the revolution. Two key reasons explain the lack of success of the anarchist idea: 1 — The weakness of the anarchist movement (in number and coordination); 2 — The absence in the country of a worker’s movement organized before the revolution. The insurrection of October-November 1917 won out over the [Alexander] Kerensky government. The Bolshevists were installed in power. They organized their so-called ‘proletarian’ state.” [Voline. Letter From Russia. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1930. Page 2.]

“… Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum … [was] known in the [Russian anarchist] movement as ‘Volin.’” [Paul Avrich. The Russian Anarchists. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1971. Page 137.]

“In the relationship with beings, which we call consciousness, we identify beings across the dispersion of silhouettes in which they appear; in self-consciousness we identify ourselves across the multiplicity of temporal phases. It is as though subjective life in the form of consciousness consisted in being itself losing itself and finding itself again so as to possess itself by showing itself, proposing itself as a theme, exposing itself in truth. This identification is not the counterpart of any image; it is a claim of the mind, proclamation, saying, kerygma [Greek/Hellēniká, κῆρυγμα, kē̂rygma, ‘to proclaim’ or ‘to preach’]. But it is not at all arbitrary, and consequently depends on a mysterious operation of schematism, in language, which can make an ideality correspond to the dispersion of aspects and images, silhouettes or phases. To become conscious of a being is then always for that being to be grasped across an ideality and on the basis of a said. Eyen an empirical, individual being is broached across the ideality of logos. Subjectivity qua consciousness can thus be interpreted as the articulation of an ontological event, as one of the mysterious ways in which its ‘act of being’ is deployed. Being a theme, being intelligible or open, possessing oneself, the moment of having in being – all that is articulated in the movement of essence, losing itself and finding itself out of an ideal principle, an ἀρχή [in Greek/Hellēniká, a̓rchḗ, ‘principle’], in its thematic exposition, being thus carries on its affair of being. The detour of ideality leads to coinciding with oneself, that is, to certainty, which remains the guide and guarantee of the whole spiritual adventure of being. But this is why this adventure is no adventure. It is never dangerous; it is self-possession, sovereignity, ἀρχή. Anything unknown that can occur to it is in advance disclosed, open, manifest, is cast in the mould of the known, and cannot be a complete surprise.” [Emmanuel Levinas, “Substitution.” The Levinas Reader. Alphonso Lingis, translator. Seán Hand, editor. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell Inc. 1989. Pages 89-125.]

“It will be said that the radical questioning of certitude reduces itself to the search for another certitude: the justification of freedom would refer to freedom. Indeed that is so, in the measure that justification cannot result in non-certitude. But in fact, the moral justification of freedom is neither certitude nor incertitude. It does not have the status of a result, but is accomplished as movement and life; it consists in addressing an infinite exigency to one’s freedom, in having a radical non-indulgence for one’s freedom. Freedom is not justified in the consciousness of certitude, but in an infinite exigency with regard to oneself, in the overcoming of all good conscience. But this infinite exigency with regard to oneself, precisely because it puts freedom in question, places me and maintains me in a situation in which 1 am not alone, in which 1 am judged. This is the primary sociality: the personal relation is in the rigor of justice which judges me and not in love that excuses me. For this judgment does not come to me from a Neuter; before the Neuter I am spontaneously free. In the infinite exigency with regard to oneself is produced the duality of the face to face.” [Emmanuel Levinas. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Alphonso Lingis, translator. Hingham, Massachusetts: Kluwer Boston, Inc. 1979. Page 304.]

“Man is not to be conceived in function of being and not-being, taken as ultimate references. Humanity, subjectivity – the excluded middle, excluded from everywhere, null-site – signify the breakup of this alternative, the one-in-the-place-of-another, substitution, signification in its signifyingness qua sign, prior to essence, before identity. Signification, prior to being, breaks up the assembling, the recollection or the present of essence. On the hither side of or beyond essence, signification is the breathlessness of the spirit expiring without inspiring, disinterestedness and gratuity or gratitude; the breakup of essence is ethics. This beyond is said, and is conveyed in discourse, by a saying out of breath or retaining its breath, the extreme possibility of the spirit, its very epoche, by which it says before resting in its own theme and therein allowing itself to be absorbed by essence. This breakup of identity, this changing of being into signification, that is, into substitution, is the subject’s subjectivity, or its subjection to everything, its susceptibility, its vulnerability, that is, its sensibility.” [Emmanuel Levinas. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Alphonso Lingis, translator. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press. 1998. Page 14.]

“Objective whole or world of values recognised in a primordial axiology that is the originary attachment of the living to life, tension that underlies, if you like, the reference, formally necessary, of beings to their being. For men as living beings, it is surely in their existing that their very existence is at stake. Originary valorisation that articulates itself in those needs called natural or material: attachment to the existing, to the event of being, to the very esse [Latin for ‘to be’] that matters to men and about which they worry, to which they fix themselves and where, in the world, they are fixed: originary, natural and naïve interestedness.” [Emmanuel Levinas, “Sociality and money.” François Bouchetoux and Campbell Jones, translators. Business Ethics: A European Review. Volume 16, number 3, July 2007. Pages 203-207.]

“It is I who support the Other and am responsible for her. One thus sees that in the human subject, at the same time as a total subjection, my primo-geniture manifests itself. My responsibility is untransferable, no one could replace me. In fact, it is a matter of expressing the very identity of the human I, starting from responsibility—that is, starting from this position or deposition of the sovereign I in self-consciousness, a deposition which is precisely its responsibility for the Other. Responsibility is what is incumbent on me exclusively, and what, humanly, I cannot refuse. This charge is the supreme dignity of the unique. I am I only to the degree that I am responsible, a non-interchangeable I. I can substitute myself for everyone, but no one can substitute himself for me. Such is my inalienable identity of subject.” [Emmanuel Levinas, “Ethics and Infinity.” CrossCurrents. Volume 34, number 2, summer 1984. Pages 191-203.]

“Against an analysis that wants to show the disruption of habitual structures of understanding in hearing the divine word, one opposes the possibility of this disruption as an effect of any speech whatsoever. It will be a question of showing that all speech is disruptive – that this disruption is critique – moral [accuser].” [Emmanuel Levinas, “Notes on Metaphor.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies. Volume 20, issue 3, July 2012. Pages 319-330.]

“The process Of reflection stirred by the face of another individual is not a thought about—a representation—but at once a thought for, a non-indifference towards the other which upsets the equilibrium of the calm and impassive soul of pure knowledge. It is an awakening to a uniqueness in the other person which cannot be grasped by knowledge, a step towards the newcomer as someone who is both unique and a fellow being. I am speaking of the face itself, over and above any particular expression it may bear, the face that exists beneath every expression that crosses its countenance and cloaks its nudity. To look at it in this way is not so much an unveiling as a stripping bare of something exposed and undefended, revealed as it is, naked as mortality itself. The extreme precariousness of something unique, the precariousness of the stranger. The totality of the exposure lies in the fact that it is not merely a new awareness of the familiar revealed in its true light; it is a form of expression, a primal language, a summons, an appeal.” [Emmanuel Levinas, “The face of a stranger.” UNESCO Courier. Volume 45, number 7, July–August 1992. Page 66.]

“In brief, the problem of being that [Martin] Heidegger poses leads us to man, for man is a being who understands being. But, on the other hand, this understanding of being is itself being-it is not an attribute, but man’s mode of existence. This is not a question of a purely conventional extension of the word ‘being’ to one of man’s faculties, which in our case would be the understanding of being, but the bringing into relief of the very specificity of man, whose ‘actions’ and ‘properties’ are modes of being.” [Emmanuel Levinas, “Martin Heidegger and Ontology.” Diacritics. Volume 26, number 1, spring 1996. Pages 11-32.]

“… responsibility precedes liberty, which means precisely belonging to God, a unique belonging which, though prior to liberty, does not destroy liberty, and thus defines, one might say, the meaning of that exceptional word: God; God appearing in the name of an assembly of the just, itself called divine; God as the very possibility of such an assembly. And inversely, an assembly of the just that is not exclusively the ultimate source of its own judgment: another will is present within it; the decision of the judge is more than human spontaneity — it is in spired. That is what our text will go on to say. Justice is not decided by means of an order that it imposes or restores; nor does it emerge from a system whose rationality commands, without distinction, both men and gods, revealing itself in human legislation like the structures of space in geometry. Such a justice is what Montesquieu calls the Logos of Jupiter, a metaphor that rescues religion but eliminates transcendence. In the justice of the rabbis, however, the difference between divine and human retains its significance. Ethics is not the simple corollary of the religious, but is, by itself, the element in which religious transcendence receives its original meaning.” [Emmanuel Levinas, “The Jewish Understanding of Scripture.” CrossCurrents. Volume 44, number 4, winter 1994/1995. Pages 488-504.]

“… [The] impossibility of encountering the Other without speaking to him or her signifies that in this instance thought is inseparable from expression. But such expression does not consist in decanting in some manner a thought in connection with the Other into the mind of the Other.…

“Nothing theological, nothing mystical lies hidden behind the analysis that we have just given of the encounter with the Other, an encounter whose formal structure it was important to underline; namely, that its object is at one and the same time given to us and in society with us, without this event of sociality being able to reduce itself to an ordinary property revealed in the given, without knowledge being able to take precedence over sociality. If the word religion is taken to imply, however, that the Infinite is rejoined through human faces, or that the relation with human beings, which, separated from the exercise of power, is irreducible to comprehension, then it has an ethical resonance all of whose Kantian echoes we accept.”

[Emmanuel Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” Philosophy Today. Volume 33, number 2, summer 1989. Pages 121-129.]

“As well as outlining Levinas’ an-archic ethics, its implications for corporations will be investigated.…

“In his paper ‘Substitution’ Emmanuel Levinas … notes that our conscious apprehension of other people is organized in an idealized way. It is idealized in the sense that once we seek to understand others we do so using the themes and categories that we apply to them. In consciousness other people are not individual or particular but rather are understood as they relate to the ‘types’ we use to compare and categorize them.… Levinas retains that exposure to the other person is not limited to consciousness and thematization. The other person can never be fully exposed through symbols, images and language. The spiritual dimension of the encounter with the other is, for Levinas, that which exceeds our ability to know them categorically; it exceeds any principle that would apply. To such a principle Levinas attributes the Greek work arche: an ideal principle imagined to be able to define experience prior to its occurrence.”

[Carl Rhodes, “Ethical anarchism, business ethics and the politics of disturbance.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, 2014. Creative Commons. Pages 725-737.]

“It’s never a matter of ethics versus pragmatism; it’s a question of which informs the other. Humans have shown themselves capable of almost unlimited imagination and innovation-qualities that could be said to define human beings. People have used this capacity to do both great good and great harm. The point is that when humans set their minds to doing something, it’s frequently possible. It makes sense to first ask what people want to do and why, from an ethical standpoint, and then get to the pragmatic how-to questions. The very process of asking what’s right is how people fill out ethics in praxis, to meet new demands and dilemmas, new social conditions and contexts.

“Anarchism, then, brings an egalitarian ethics out into the world, making it transparent, public, and shared. It maintains an ethical orientation, while continually trying to put such notions into practice, as flawed as the effort might be. When other people come into contact with this ethical compass, they will hopefully ‘get it’ and incorporate the same values into their lives, because it works. It offers directionality to political involvement and buttresses people’s efforts to remake society. It turns surviving into thriving. That’s the crucial difference between a pragmatic versus ethical impulse: people, in cooperative concert, qualitatively transform one another’s lives.”

[Cindy Milstein. Anarchism and Its Aspirations. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2010. Pages 48-49.]

“[Cindy] Milstein’s focus on ethics is absolutely correct. In particular I like her commitment to democracy (direct democracy), which many anarchists reject. But we do not have to choose between values and a materialistic analysis of how capitalism works and how it can be challenged. Whatever [Karl] Marx—or [Murray] Bookchin—thought, these are not incompatible perspectives. A moral analysis can show us the goal and cause us to reject the current system. A materialistic analysis can offer guidance as to which forces are going in a libertarian direction and which are moving in a regressive direction. And morality can, again, guide us in deciding which to choose. That is a discussion and a decision. Cindy Milstein’s book [Anarchism and Its Aspirations] is a valuable contribution to that discussion.” [Wayne Price, “The Ethical Anarchism of Cindy Milstein: Review of Cindy Milstein, Anarchism and Its Aspirations (2010), Oakland CA: AK Press.” Anarkismo.net. August thth, 2011. Online publication. No pagination. Retrieved on November 26th, 2016.]

“In the nineteenth century, anarchists were strict individualists favouring clandestine organization and violent revolution: in the twentieth century, they have been romantic communalists favouring moral experiments and sexual liberation. This article examines the growth of this ethical anarchism in Britain in the late nineteenth century, as exemplified by the Freedom Group and the Tolstoyans. These anarchists adopted the moral and even religious concerns of groups such as the Fellowship of the New Life. Their anarchist theory resembled the beliefs of countercultural groups such as the aesthetes more closely than it did earlier forms of anarchism. And this theory led them into the movements for sex reform and communal living.…

“To the Victorians, anarchism was an individualist doctrine found in clandestine organizations of violent revolutionaries. By the outbreak of the First World War, another very different type of anarchism was becoming equally well recognized. The new anarchists still opposed the very idea of the state, but they were communalists not individualists, and they sought to realize their ideal peacefully through personal example and moral education, not violently through acts of terror and a general uprising.”

[Mark Bevir, “The Rise of Ethical Anarchism in Britain, 1885-1900.” Historical Research. Volume 69, 1996. Pages 143-165.]

“… the present study investigates an important but neglected strain in [Pitirim A.] Sorokin’s oeuvre, the anarchistic dimension of his work.…

“In what follows I first establish the pertinence of this line of thought to an understanding of Sorokin’s work and, second, explore the ethical project of Sorokin’s writings and reveal its roots in ethical anarchism.”

[Gary Dean Jaworski, “Pitirim A. Sorokin’s sociological anarchism.” History of the Human Sciences. Volume 6, number 3, 1993. Pages 61-77.]

“… a part of modernity, at least from an anarchist perspective, was to recognize the equality of all in the absence of State-defined difference and institutional coercion. The intersection of art and anarchism opened a theoretical trajectory that explored freedom from institutional coercion and provided alternative models of organization that problematized the status of the art object and the role the artist plays in contemporary life. I call this latent anarchism that existed, and continues to exist in the art world functional anarchism(s). I pluralize anarchism because of the many models that can exist across the anarchist spectrum and, indeed, to announce that these functional anarchism(s) are not static, or fixed, but kinetic, pluralized, and generative.” [Michael Frederick Rattray. Functional Anarchism(s) and the Theory of Global Contemporary Art. Ph.D. thesis (U.S. English, dissertation). Concordia University. Montreal, Quebec. January, 2014. Page 6.]

“A critical approach to social institutions will not immediately appeal to a student who shapes his behavior and ideas in terms of the standards of the upper class. Habit, social pressure and the moral code have taught this student that ‘what is, is right.’ Thus he responds apologetically to an institutional arrangement which he did not create, which he does not direct, and whose main bene fits he does not reap. This habitually apologetic response, this identification with a stratum he will never reach, prevents him from defining personal aims which his models do not possess, and thus prevents him from interpreting the prevailing institutional arrangement as a constraint to his further development.” [Fredy Perlman, “Critical Education.” The Journal of General Education. Volume 19, number 3, October 1967. Pages 179-193.]

“Critiques of economic development, material progress, technology and industry are not a discovery of the Fifth Estate. Human beings resisted the incursions from the earliest days, and many of North America’s best-known 19ᵗʰ century writers, among them [Herman] Melville, [Nathaniel] Hawthorne and [Henry David] Thoreau, were profound critics of the technological society. Since these writers became ‘classics of American literature,’ and therefore available to all interested readers, defenders of official views have had to carry on a ‘cold war’ against them. The most powerful weapon has been the classroom assignment; most students attacked by this weapon never again cracked a book by a ‘classic.’ Other ways of ‘conquering and pacifying’ the classics have been more subtle: the authors were maligned, the works were misinterpreted, the critiques were diverted and at times inverted.” [Fredy Perlman. The Machine Against The Garden: Two essays on American literature and culture. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1985. Page 6.]

“Escape from death in a gas chamber or a Pogrom, or incarceration in a concentration camp, may give a thoughtful and capable writer, [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn for example, profound insights into many of the central elements of contemporary existence, but such an experience does not, in itself, make Solzhenitsyn a thinker, a writer, or even a critic of concentration camps; it does not, in itself, confer any special powers. In another person the experience might lie dormant as a potentiality, or remain forever meaningless, or it might contribute to making the person an ogre. In short, the experience is an indelible part of the individual’s past but it does not determine his future; the individual is free to choose his future; he is even free to choose to abolish his freedom ….” [Fredy Perlman. Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1983. Page 2.]

“The process of capitalist production was analyzed and criticized by many philosophers and poets, most notably by Karl Marx, whose critiques animated, and continue to animate, militant social movements. Marx had a significant blind spot; most of his disciples, and many militants who were not his disciples, built their platforms on that blind spot. Marx was an enthusiastic supporter of the bourgeoisie’s struggle for liberation from feudal bonds — who was not an enthusiast in those days? He, who observed that the ruling ideas of an epoch were the ideas of the ruling class, shared many of the ideas of the newly empowered middle class. He was an enthusiast of the Enlightenment, of rationalism, of material progress. It was Marx who insightfully pointed out that every time a worker reproduced his labor power, every minute he devoted to his assigned task, he enlarged the material and social apparatus that dehumanized him. Yet the same Marx was an enthusiast for the application of science to production.” [Fredy Perlman. The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1984. Page 8.]

“The façade falls. The wax begins to melt.

“The solid steel beams, it turns out, are made of plastic,

“The marble walls are painted wood,

“And the rose,

“The beautiful red rose, the rose of justification:

“A crêpe facsimile!

“Its aroma mechanically emanating

“From a perfume squirt in the vase.

“Is this a fitting end to the farce? you ask.

“You’ve thrown your sins to the devil for generations.

“Infidel devil. Heretic devil.

“Red, black and yellow, traitor, anarchist devil.

“But who’d ever have thought the devil’d come up

“To confront you with an inventory?”

[Fredy Perlman. Plunder. Detroit, Michigan: Black & Red. 1973. Page 64.]

“Logic is not taught much in American schools, and the argument looks impressive when it is accompanied by an enormous statistical apparatus and extremely complicated geometrical designs. If a critic insists on calling the argument simplistic and circular, he’s turned off as soon as the ‘scientist’ pulls out figures calculated on computers inaccessible to the public, and he’s turned out as soon as the ‘scientist’ starts ‘communicating’ in a completely esoteric language which has all the logical fallacies built-in, but which is comprehensible only to ‘scientific colleagues.’” [Fredy Perlman. Anything Can Happen. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1968. Page 6.]

“Capitalists were great critics of personified power when that power was based on family titles and divine rights. They were archenemies of the State when it was feudal. They were muckrakers of the plunder and social waste which consolidated the personified power of feudal lords. Early capitalists had a vantage point from which they could expose forever the feudal gap between the development of productive forces and the form of the social relations. As opposed to the high born whose power depended on social plunder and ceremonial waste, the power of early capitalists depended on the productive forces, and the growth of their power depended, not on plunder and waste, but on the further development of society’s productive forces. Capitalism contemptuously kicked the corpse of its predecessor into a historical hole, designating it as a dark age, a pre-history of humanity. Athena, goddess of reason, had triumphed at last; enlightenment and clarity were re-born after a long sleep, an unexplained amnesia. Never again would plunder and war be means to social power; never again would greatne& coincide with the destruction of society’s productive forces. The new social relation, Capital, could not po&ibly lead to a rift between the productive forces and the social relations, since Capital is itself the productive forces. Yet for all that, capitalism was not exempted from the fate of its predece^ors. From its very origin, Capital was also a form of personified power, the power of money—a fact which made it possible for early capitalists to lend their support to dying feudal powers during the brief historical moment before their final demise. As a form of personified power—as a personification of the productive power estranged by the creators of the productive forces—Capital enjoyed years of progress, in fact several centuries of glorious unfettered development, while it traveled inflexibly back to the very spot on which its predecessor had died unmourned. Despite all its youthful inventiveness, exploits and ambitions, in its decrepitude it cannot even avoid looking like its predecessor. Capital did not bury its predecessor. Capitalism found it necessary to revive the ghost of its arch-enemy, to reconstitute the personified power of community, the State, and finally to magnify this power beyond all feudal dreams by enriching it with the productive power personified by Capital.” [Michael Velli (Fredy Perlman). Manual for Revolutionary Leaders. Detroit, Michigan: Black & Red. 1974. Page 31.]

“In the performance of their daily activities, the members of capitalist society simultaneously carry out two processes: they reproduce the form of their activities, and they eliminate the material conditions to which this form of activity initially responded. But they do not know they carry out these processes; their own activities are not transparent to them. They are under the illusion that their activities are responses to natural conditions beyond their control and do not see that they are themselves authors of those conditions. The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life; the task of critical theory is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent, to make the reproduction of the social form of capitalist activity visible within people’s daily activities.” [Fredy Perlman. The Reproduction of Daily Life. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1969. Page 4.]

“Hesiod’s remembrance of things past gives him a power Moses had lacked: the power to remove his Leviathanic mask while still enmeshed in a Leviathanic web. We will call such a power “critical theory,” an insipid name for it. This power will later be shaped into a dagger with two edges, but not by the Greeks to whom Hesiod gives it.” [Fredy Perlman. Against His-story, Against Leviathan. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1983. Page 50.]

“The Egocrat finds ‘community’ and ‘communication,’ not by smashing the elements of the spectacle in his reach, but by surrounding himself with like-minded individuals, other Egos, who reflect the Golden Thought to each other and confirm each other’s validity as possessors of it. Chosen People. At this point the Thought, if it is to remain golden, must evermore remain the same: unsullied and uncompromised; criticism and revision are synonyms of betrayal, ‘Thus it can only exist as a polemic with reality. It refutes everything. It can survive only by freezing, by becoming increasingly totalitarian.’ ([Jacques] Camatte) Therefore, in order to continue to reflect and confirm the Thought, the individual must stop thinking.” [Fredy Perlman. Ten Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1977. Page 3.]

“The people who arrested me weren’t workers but police agents. They had never been committed to the self-liberation of workers; on the contrary, their life-long commitment was to establish a dictatorship over the workers, to transform society into a beehive and themselves into queen bees, to become the wardens of a vast prison camp. They won and we lost. That sums up the entire history of the working class. But how can you say those who fought against them contributed to their victory?

“Take the people in our group. Luisa and I spent a long time reminding ourselves of them. At most you can say that some of them didn’t know what they were doing. Jasna, for instance, became something like Luisa’s ‘disciple.’ Luisa remembered that poor Jasna constantly repeated things Luisa had told her, but only the words and incidents, not the meanings. This doesn’t mean Jasna had the same starting point as an inquisitioner or a prison guard. Or take Jan. Luisa called him a hothead. Maybe he was, but his ‘hotheadedness’ was a healthy and human response to abuse and exploitation. There isn’t even a question about any of the others. Vera and Adrian couldn’t let a stranger walk by without trying to convert him to the ‘self-government of the producers.’ I remember how I admired the speed with which Vera answered people’s questions. Once, when someone asked her, ‘Who’s going to pick up the garbage if there’s no government?’ she immediately retorted, ‘Who do you think picks it up now — the government?’ Or take Marc. Luisa remembered him as being slower than Vera but more profound. He could spend hours talking about the types of social relations people would be able to create and develop as soon as they were free of authority. And he was so resourceful; whenever materials or tools were lacking, he knew either where to find them or what could be used instead. As for Claude: all I remember about him is that he seemed devoted to every project he undertook. I don’t remember Titus very well either. I do remember I didn’t like him; he struck me as too much of a ‘realist’, he was always calculating the ‘balance of forces.’ But he was an old friend of Luisa’s and she was always convinced of his total devotion to the workers’ struggle. I also remember that you looked up to him for his knowledge and experience.”

[Sophia Nachalo (a character created by Fredy Perlman), “Sophia’s first letter,” in Fredy Perlman. Letters of Insurgents. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1976. Page 6-16.]

“Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.…

“The following essay is written in the conviction that anarchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly excellent medicine for epistemology, and for the philosophy of science.”

[Paul Feyerabend. Against Method. Third edition. London and New York: Verso Books imprint of New Left Books. 1993. Page 9.]

“Let us … start with our outline of an anarchistic methodology and a corresponding anarchistic science. There is no need to fear that the diminished concern for law and order in science and society that characterizes an anarchism of this kind will lead to chaos. The human nervous system is too well organized for that. There may, of course, come a time when it will be necessary to give reason a temporary advantage and when it will be wise to defend its rules to the exclusion of everything else. I do not think that we are living in such a time today.” [Paul Feyerabend. Against Method. Third edition. London and New York: Verso Books imprint of New Left Books. 1993. Page 13.]

“… I defend the pacifism of the Dadaists and say that I am against violence.… I say that political, or eschatological anarchism regards violence as necessary.… The text says that violence is necessary according to political anarchism and adds that political anarchism is a doctrine I reject.… [P]olitical anarchism [is] ‘not the most attractive political philosophy’ and … I … distinguish my views from political anarchism, just to be on the safe side.” [Paul Feyerabend, “Logic, Literacy, and Professor Gellner.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Volume 27, number 4, December 1976. Pages 381-391.]

“[Paul] Feyerabend compares science and ideology as equivalent and points to a delicate note, that science finds itself innocent from ideology, even anarchists who destroy the foundation of any method, leave science without criticism and argumentation and believe that it has to be preserved. If we refer to [Jürgen] Habermas’ words about ideology that every ideology is born from critique of ideology, science, in a way, gives itself a certain legitimacy that describes all ideology and traditions and this is when itself has transformed into ideology and will suppresses all other traditions.” [Elham Shirvani Ghadikolaei and Seyed Mahdi Sajjadi, “The implications of Feyerabend’s epistemological approach for educational research methods.” Educational Research and Reviews. Volume 10, number 17, September 2015. Pages 2481-2488.]

“… he [Paul Feyerabend] was a restless spirit, like Galileo’s Earth always on the move, and was already, characteristically, pushing his ideas to more radical extremes, to the brink of paradox, and beyond. Attempts by philosophers like Popper to formulate norms of rationality, he argued, were bound to fail, and science in particular does not conform to any such norms. In his first and most famous book, Against Method (1975, based on a paper completed in 1969), he argued for an anarchist epistemology in which ‘Anything Goes.’ Not only was science not the embodiment of some abstract rationality, it was not necessarily the only way of acquiring knowledge, or a better way than, say, religion, or myth, or ‘alternative’ medicine.” [Roy Edgley, “Anarchy in Academia.” New Left Review. Series I, 217, May–June 1996. Pages 155-160.]

“For psychiatry, a kind of ontological anarchy is apparent (at least, for the specific case I examine herein). Through this concept, I intend to capture the diverse theories and practices that have attempted to clarify the murky pathological image that has so long been characteristic of antisociality. Indeed, I suggest that it is at least in part precisely through this diversity that a stable referent for terms such as ‘psychopathy’ or ‘antisocial personality disorder’ has so far escaped the sophisticated attempts of psychiatrists to constitute it. In other words: the variety of theories and experiments associated with pathological antisociality creates a range of parallel trajectories along which research might progress, increasing the breadth of perspectives available to mental health professionals from which to articulate the ontology of conditions like ASPD [antisocial personality disorder] and psychopathy.” [Martyn Pickersgill, “The Endurance of Uncertainty: Antisociality and Ontological Anarchy in British Psychiatry, 1950?2010.” Science in Context. Volume 27, number 1, March 2014. Pages 143-175.]

“Dangerous Conversations is a project born out of the struggle to end systems of domination. Our involvement in movements described as anarchist, activist, horizontalist, and so on has been at times inspiring and at other times disillusioning and frustrating. This zine is not aimed at Anarchists or Activists but at anyone who struggles against the many forms of domination that blight our lives: ableism, ageism, authority, capitalism, civilisation, caste and class systems, heteronormativity, islamaphobia, male privilege, speciesism, transphobia, white supremacy (and others that are still unrecognised).

“Dangerous Conversations is intended as an intervention in business as usual. We hoped to collect texts and viewpoints that challenge the status quo in a way that, rather than (or perhaps as well as) provoking hostility, provoke constructive responses and discussion. We hope that, as much as possible, the zine becomes a place to converse and to deepen affinity. By showing solidarity with others who also see the struggle as their own struggle, even when we differ on the details, we can become stronger as a movement. Ours is a strength that comes through diversity and empathy for different viewpoints rather than the imposition of dogma and distrust.

“As well as not claiming to have the answers, we are aware of the shortcomings of this project. We don’t claim to be trying to represent all of the different struggles against privilege and hierarchy that exist. We do not seek to have ownership of this project and know that it is necessary for everyone that struggles to be heard and have a place. We hope that Dangerous Conversations can be a space where marginalised perspectives can get the prominence they deserve and we hope to widen participation in the editorial collective.”

[Anonymous. Dangerous Conversations: Breaking down domination and finding our voices. Nottingham, England: Dangerous Conversations. April, 2011. No pagination.]

“It is hardly necessary for us to add that we fight against (on the same principle of the abolition of private property), the institution of the family, such as it exists nowadays. Thoroughly convinced partisans of the free union of the sexes. we repel the thought of marriage which institutes for the benefit of the man a new and exorbitant proprietarial right, namely the right of ownership of the woman, but in order to a possible establishment of the free union of the sexes, it is necessary that both the man and the woman shall enjoy the same right in society as well as have the same duties imposed on them, that is, they must be equal a thing that is impossible, unless private property be done away with.

“In the same way it seems to us superfluous to state that recognising neither boundaries or frontiers we are concerned in working out the realization of our aspirations, wherever the lottery of events has placed us, regarding each revolutionary associate, no matter whence he comes, as a brother, and each exploiter of humanity, whatever tongue he may speak, as an enemy. And lastly we do not believe in the advent of the new order for which we are struggling by means of legal and pacific methods, and that is why we are revolutionary socialists. The study of history has taught us that the noblest conquests of man are written on a blood-stained book. To give birth to justice, humanity suifers a thousand tortures. Ours be then, the force, so often employed against us, ours the force the heritage of the people which,has been wrested from it by a coalition of the clever, and from its own want of energy, ours the force less {as a desideratum than a consummation, regretfully sought less as a choice than as a necessity; Ours the force as the only means of breaking asunder the iron chains that bind us!

“But at the same time let also prudence and caution guide us, the caution that determines the hour for the employment of force, and the firmness that preserves and directs it, unvanquished through all obstacles. Let us mature our ideas and our aspirations. Away with reckless and useless struggles; but no more hesitation nor armistice on the day of battle, and once having commenced the final struggle, let it be no longer merely with the hope of success, but with the certainty of triumph!

“So, comrades, we finish by saying we are Atheists, Anti-Statists and Free Communists or International Revolutionary Socialists.…

“To the individualists (anarchists or otherwise) we are opposed. We contend that capital is the result not of any one individual’s labour, but of all the workers combined, not only of this but of many past generations. Therefore it would be unjust that it should be held as Individual Property. We are also opposed to the idea of every one receiving according to his deeds. that the strong, the able bodied, those well endowed by nature, are to have all they can procure, while the halt, the lame, and the blind are to be left to their own resources, or at best depend on the charity of those better off. Again, so long as private property exists, lthere cam-be no freedom for women, all the advantages of co-operative labour are lost, and an enormous amount of: labour wasted in providing for separate homes, farms and what not.”

[Joseph Lane. An Anti-Statist, Communist Manifesto. London: Joseph Lane. 1887. Pages 11-13.]

“Proletarian sabotage and capitalistic sabotage. The saboters of the mile. Saboters of the mills. Saboters of iron and steel. The great contractors of the fatherland. From the workers sabotage drops the gold of the bourgeoisie. From the capitalist sabotage oozes out human blood.…

“For the workers’ sabotage which is aimed only at the means of exploitation, against the machines and the tools, that is against inert, painless and lifeless things, the bourgeoisie has nothing but curses and maledictions.…

“Saboters are the farmers and traders who, by adulterating the milk, chief nourishment of childhood, sap the very root of the growing generation.

“Saboters are the millers and boss bakers who, by mixing talcum, chalk or other cheap but harmful ingredients with flour, adulterate the bread, a nourishment of first necessity.

“Saboters the manufacturers of chocolate made with palm and cocoa oil.

“Saboters the manufacturers and sellers of coffee mixed with starch, chicory and acorns.

“Saboters the grocers who sell pulverised pepper made with almond shells and olive stones.

“Saboters the confectioners who sell glucose taffy, creams made with vaseline, honey with starch and chestnut meal.

“Saboters the manufacturers of vinegar with sulphuric acid.

“Saboters the dairymen who sell cheese made of starch and butter of margarine.

“Saboters the brewers whose beer is distilled from corn leaves.

“Saboters the great patriotic and public-spirited contractors of the great army supplies with paper soles, cartridges with dust and who sell fermented wheat, rotten canned goods, etc.

“Saboters the iron and steel barons who build the powerful boilers of the warships with cracks and weak spots that will cause their explosion and the murder of thousands.

“Saboters the great importers of meat from clandestine abattoirs where tuberculous cattle are slaughtered.

“Saboters the building and railway contractors, the furniture makers, the manufacturers of chemicals and fertilisers — in short, all the captains of industry of any calibre, cut and make. All saboters — all, without one single exception, because all trick, fake, adulterate, defraud and swindle.

“Sabotage reigns supreme in the capitalist world it is everywhere — in industry, commerce, agriculture.

“Now, this sort of capitalist sabotage which saturates the present society and constitutes the element in which this society breathes, as we breathe in the oxygen of the air, this sort of sabotage which will only disappear with the downfall of capitalist society itself, is much more damnable than the sabotage of the workers.

“The latter — it is well to emphasise the point — hits capital only in the bank account, whilst the former strikes at the sources of human life, ruins the health of the people and fills the hospitals and the cemeteries. From the wounds produced by the proletarian sabotage only gold flows out. From those inflicted by the capitalist sabotage, it is human blood which gushes out in streams.

“The workers’ sabotage is inspired by generous and altruistic principles. It is a shield of defence and protection against the usuries and vexations of the bosses; it is the weapon of the disinherited who, whilst he struggles for his family’s existence and his own, aims also to better the social conditions of his class and to deliver it from the exploitation that strangles and crushes it.

“It is the ferment of a better life. he capitalist sabotage, on the other hand, is nothing but a means of increasing exploitation and profits. It does nothing but whet the ravenous appetites of the exploiters, that are never satisfied.

“It is the expression of a loathsome voracity of an unquenchable thirst of riches which does not even stop at crime!”

[Émile Pouget. Sabotage. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1912. Pages 38-39.]

“… written chat interaction takes place in a “chat room’s” spoken-word atmosphere, and the primary function of cell phones is that of talking. In addition, digital orality can be seen as a performance of linguistic anarchism adopted as a mark of a youth culture ….” [Oren Soffer, “The Oral Paradigm and Snapchat.” Social Media + Society. July–September, 2016. Creative Commons. Pages 1-4.]

“One important motivation for appealing to rules is the idea that this is required in order to account for communication. Without rules, it is argued, we get linguistic anarchy: People could use their words in any way they like and so the important connection between language and communication is lost. The result is a ‘Humpty Dumpty’-theory of meaning.…

“… linguistic anarchism is avoided. To take a famous example: Humpty Dumpty can mean a nice knock-down argument by ‘glory,’ if he likes, but only if he uses (is disposed to use) ‘glory’ accordingly.”

[Åsa Maria Wikforss, “Semantic Normativity.” Philosophical Studies. Volume 102, number 2, January 2001. Pages 203-226.]

“… there is one very significant lesson we can learn from examining what is known about non-civilized people. Civilization has shown itself to be a homogenizing process. This becomes especially clear now that a single civilization has come to dominate the globe. It could even lead one to believe in a set human nature. But looking at what we know about non-civilized people, it becomes clear that there are vast varieties of ways that humans can live in this world, endless possibilities for relating with oneself, each other and the surrounding environment. Deterministic speculations have no place here. Instead, the very real possibilities for revolutionary transformation can be seen as it becomes clear that the social world we live in has not always been. But our possibilities will open up in the course of our project here and now, so the “primitive” cannot be used as a model, simply as one tool among many for achieving a clearer understanding of the nature of civilization.

“One of the areas of theoretical exploration that developed among anti-civilization anarchists is the exploration of origins. This exploration certainly opened up many interesting questions. It has also opened the possibility for a drift into ideology. The first thing we need to keep in mind while exploring origins is that we cannot find answers. This can only be an area for speculation and raising questions. Otherwise, it turns into a search for the ‘original sin’ after which the fall into civilization was inevitable, and we are on the path of a determinism that requires redemption not revolution.”

[Wolfi Landstreicher. Barbaric Thoughts: On a Revolutionary Critique of Civilization. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Pages 7-8.]

“First of all, there is nothing inherently primitivist about a critique of civilization, particularly if that critique is anarchist and revolutionary. Such critiques have existed nearly as long as a self-aware anarchist movement has existed — and not always even connected to a critique of technology or progress (Dejacque felt that certain technological developments would allow human beings to more easily get beyond civilization; on the other hand, Enrico Arrigoni, alias Frank Brand, saw civilization and industrial technology as blocks hindering real human progress). The real question, in my opinion, is whether primitivism is any help at all to an anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization.

“The word primitivism can mean two rather different things. First of all, it can simply mean making use of what we know about ‘primitive’ societies to critique civilization. This form of primitivism appears relatively harmless. But is it? Leaving aside the obvious criticism of the dependence on those experts called anthropologists for information about ‘primitive’ societies, there is another problem here. The actual societies that we call ‘primitive’ were and, where they still exist, are living relationships between real, living, breathing human beings, individuals developing their interactions with the world around them. The capacity to conceive of them as a model for comparison already involves a reification of these lived relationships, transforming them into an abstract thing — the ‘primitive’ — an idealized image of ‘primitiveness.’ Thus, the use of this method of critiquing civilization dehumanizes and deindividualizes the real people who live or have lived these relationships. In addition, this sort of critique offers us no real tool for figuring out how to battle against civilization here and now. At most, the reified, abstract conception of the ‘primitive’ becomes a model, a program for a possible future society.

“This brings me to the second meaning of primitivism — the idea that ‘primitive’ societies offer a model for future society. The adherents to this form of primitivism can themselves rightly be called primitivists, because, however much they may deny it, they are promoting a program and an ideology. In this form, I actually consider primitivism to be in conflict with anarchic thought and practice. The reason can be found in the Novatore quote above. Simply replace ‘communism’ with ‘primitivism’ and ‘collective revolution’ with ‘industrial collapse’ and everything should be pretty clear. As I see it, one of the most important differences between marxism and anarchism is that the latter is not essentially an eschatological vision of a future for which we wait, but a way of confronting the world here and now. Thus, revolution for the anarchist is also not something historical processes guarantees for the future, but something for us to live and create here and now. Primitivism is no more livable now than the marxist’s communism. It too is a program for the future, and one that depends on contingencies that are beyond our control to bring about. Thus, it has no more to do with anarchist practice than Marx’s eschatology.…

“An anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization does not begin from any comparison to other societies or to any future ideal. It begins from my confrontation, from your confrontation, with the immediate reality of civilization in our lives here and now. It is the recognition that the totality of social relationships that we call civilization can only exist by stealing our lives from us and breaking them down into bits that the ruling order can use in its own reproduction. This is not a process accomplished once and for all in the distant past, but one that goes on perpetually in each moment. This is where the anarchist way of conceiving life comes in. In each moment, we need to try to determine how to grasp back the totality of our own life to use against the totality of civilization. Thus, as Armando Diluvi said, our anarchism is essentially destructive. As such it needs no models or programs including those of primitivism. As an old, dead, bearded classicist of anarchism said ‘The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.’ And one that can be put into practice immediately. (Another dead anti-authoritarian revolutionary of a generation or two later called passionate destruction ‘a way to grasp joy immediately’).”

[Wolfi Landstreicher. A Critique, Not a Program: For a Non-Primitivist Anti-Civilization Critique. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Pages 1-3.]

“This chapter argues for increased and sustained analysis and action within anarchist movements of resistance with regard to decolonization and Indigenous struggles against colonization. As individuals and groups committed to antioppressive, antistate and all around liberatory aims, anarchists necessarily must consider the decolonizing and antiracist dimensions of resistance. This is especially the case for anarchist movements within settler colonial ‘North America,’ an entire continent founded on the displacement, dispossession and genocide of Indigenous peoples and one where anarchist movements are most often white settler dominated. As such, we must reconfigure our practice and theory to account for, and actively resist, colonialism, and the ways that it is linked with white supremacy to compound domination and oppression in societies that continue to be premised on the continuation of white-privileged settlers.…

“The commitment to a critique of all forms of oppression and domination, therefore, carries with it an enormous responsibility and level of commitment for anarchists. Fighting the state and capitalism is not enough. Anarchism must be against all forms of oppression and domination, and while anarchism generally rejects the view that there is some singular issue or oppression that must be focused on or which is primary … it seems imperative to recognize that some forms may come to the fore at specific times and in specific contexts. This chapter argues, first and foremost, for increased recognition of the white supremacist and settler colonial context in which North American anarchism finds itself.…

“The recognition of colonialism as a starting point for oppression and domination in settler colonial contexts is a key point of analysis that has existed on the periphery of anarchism. A reorientation needs to move towards detailing the complexities of colonialism, the specific efforts of Indigenous peoples to resist its contemporary manifestations and the possible forms that settler decolonization may begin to take. Colonialism, it must be noted, is the historical and ongoing process that structures relationships, power dynamics and social stratification in settler societies like ‘Canada’ and the ‘US.’ Colonialism is what, at the most basic level, defines the contexts in which we operate, based upon dispossession and violence for the benefit of settlers. As I have argued above, colonialism is therefore a core logic that underwrites all of the political work, the theory and practice, that we, as anarchists, might seek to implement towards creating cultures of resistance. Therefore, one step forward is for social movement theory as a whole, and anarchist theory in particular, to take Indigenous theory and practice seriously, while paying attention to its own location as a Western-dominated theoretical paradigm.”

[Adam Gary Lewis, “Anti-State Resistance On Stolen Land: Settler Colonialism, Settler Identity and the Imperative of Anarchist Decolonization.” New Developments in Anarchist Studies. PJ Lilley and Jeff Shantz, editors. Brooklyn, New York: Thought Crimes imprint of Punctum Books. 2015. Creative Commons. Pages 145-186.]

“The ties between individuals are stronger when there is greater expectation—people know they can rely upon others to follow-through on important or necessary tasks. Stronger ties foster a more intense sense of obligation, as friends, comrades, fellow participants, and activists feel they have to support each other. This obligation may appear to be rooted in common values, shared experiences, or promises. Social capital is clearly an unspoken component of the anarchist theory and practice of ‘mutual aid’: the free exchange of physical, monetary, or political support with the expectation that others will inturn feel obligation to support them if and when necessary …. This activity feels very ‘natural’ to most people and they seek out relationships in which they can practice mutual aid with others. Movements that encourage the practice of mutual aid are likely to have greater social capital and people are more likely to trust one another. Anarchists also place trust in others in ways that are contingent upon a person’s hierarchical position. Thus, it is generally assumed that most ‘average’ people are worthy of a degree of trust, while those in positions of authority are not worthy of such trust.

“Trust is particularly useful in revolutionary movements where the risk of state repression is highest. Part of this deep trust is represented in the willingness to plan possibly illegal actions—e.g., property destruction against corporate property, blockading military depots, sabotaging logging equipment, supporting wildcat strikes, or unpermitted marches—with each other and assume that sensitive information will not be conveyed to anyone else, whether looselipped associates or police. Sharing secrets in a safe manner is an important practice in radical movements, since antiauthoritarian direct action plans tend to be kept strictly within the immediate social circles that are part of the planning.”

[Dana M. Williams, “Social Capital In Anarchist Movements.” New Developments in Anarchist Studies. PJ Lilley and Jeff Shantz, editors. Brooklyn, New York: Thought Crimes imprint of Punctum Books. 2015. Creative Commons. Pages 11-35.]

“Since neoliberals borrowed most of their ideas from laissez-faire doctrines, they did not represent a new variant of liberalism. Instead, these hired guns created eclectic justifications for stripping the costs incurred by the welfare state and enabling the government to further enrich the American Masters of the Universe.

“The neoliberals were employed as mercenaries in class wars. And we know that they helped win these wars because the wealthiest families in the U.S. experienced a new Gilded Age. During the Fifties and Sixties annual incomes over $200,000 were taxed at 91 per cent. But the right-wing propaganda (that had promised prosperity and a better quality of life if taxes were cut for ordinary Americans) recast the standards of economic justice prevailing since the Great Depression. Beginning with [U.S. President Ronald] Reagan the tax rate for incomes over $200,000 plummeted. By 2004, as a Princeton professor of economics and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, pointed out, the average federal tax rate imposed on the top one per cent of all families in the US was merely 31.1 per cent.…

“For three decades, neoliberal ‘free market’ doctrines, supported by voodoo economics and adulation of the rich and famous, reduced the human spirit to its most selfish qualities. These doctrines operated like the Abrams tanks did when Iraq was invaded.”

[Herman and Julia Schwendinger. Homeland Fascism: Corporatist Government in the New American Century. Jeff Shantz, editor. Brooklyn, New York: Thought Crimes imprint of Punctum Books. 2016. Creative Commons. Pages 428-430.]

“Jeff Shantz has extensive experience as an anarchist community organizer.… He received his PhD in Sociology from York University in Toronto, Canada. He is currently a Professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver, Canada, and teaches courses on critical theory, elite deviance, community advocacy and human rights.” [Jeff Shantz, Brief Bio.” Web. Undated. Retrieved on May 28th, 2017.]

“The character of the state is largely misunderstood or only slightly understood within criminology (even as the criminology of figures like PierreJoseph Proudhon and Nicos Poulantzas, who wrote much on law and the state, remain mostly unread by criminologists). Too often the state is simply taken for granted without real critical analysis. It is accepted straightforwardly, unproblematically, as the legitimate social authority, the social arbitrator.

“Where critical approaches to the state are pursued there has been a tendency toward instrumentality or uniformity in discussing and explaining state activities. That is, the state is typically portrayed as a rather direct expression of the repressive needs of capital as a whole. And this, again, is the case only in critical approaches in which the state is interrogated or even problematized at all, most criminology taking the state, its legitimacy if not its neutrality, for granted.”

[Jeff Shantz, “Editor’s Preface ‘On Parapolitics and a New Criminology,’” Eric Wilson. The Spectacle of the False Flag: Parapolitics from JFK to Watergate. Jeff Shantz, editor. Brooklyn, New York: Thought Crimes imprint of Punctum Books. 2015. Creative Commons. Pages I-IV.]

“Critique of Authoritarian Socialism

“The anarchists were unanimous in subjecting authoritarian socialism to a barrage of severe criticism. At the time when they made violent and satirical attacks these were not entirely well founded, for those to whom they were addressed were either primitive or ‘vulgar’ communists, whose thought had not yet been fertilized by Marxist humanism, or else, in the case of [Karl] Marx and [Friedrich] Engels themselves, were not as set on authority and state control as the anarchists made out.

“Although in the nineteenth century authoritarian tendencies in socialist thought were still embryonic and undeveloped, they have proliferated in our time. In the face of these excrescences, the anarchist critique seems less tendentious, less unjust; sometimes it even seems to have a prophetic ring.

“The authoritarian socialists call for a ‘revolution from above.’ They “believe that the State must continue after the Revolution. They preserve the State, power, authority, and government, increasing their scope still further. All they do is to change the titles… as though changing the names were enough to transform things!” And Proudhon concludes by saying: ‘Government is by its nature counter-revolutionary… give power to a Saint Vincent de Paul and he will be a [François] Guizot or a Talleyrand [Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord Prince of Benevento].’”

[Daniel Guérin. Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 12-14.]

“Authoritarians have no confidence in the masses’ ability to attain consciousness unaided, and, even when they claim otherwise, they have a panic-stricken terror of the masses. If they are to be credited, the masses are still brutalized by centuries of oppression. They are in need of guidance and direction. A tiny elite of leaders has to stand in for them, teach them a revolutionary strategy and lead them to victory. Libertarians, on the other hand, contend that the Revolution has to be the doing of the masses themselves, of their spontaneity and free initiative, their creative potential, as unsuspected as it is formidable. They caution against leaders who, in the name of higher consciousness, seek to overrule the masses so as to deny them the fruits of their victory later on.” [Daniel Guérin. Three Problems of the Revolution. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1958. Pages 4-5.]

“The text here offered is, in a sense, the hefty dossier of evidence in a trial in defense of a reputation. Anarchism, in fact, has been victimized by undeserved slurs ….

“For a start, those who defame it [anarchism] contend that anarchism is dead. It is alleged not to have survived the great revolutionary ordeals of our times: the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Revolution, instead of leaving it out of place in th is modern world characterized by centralization, large political and economic units and the totalitarian mind-set.”

[Daniel Guérin, “Foreward.” No Gods, No Masters. Complete and unabridged. Paul Sharkey, translator. Daniel Guérin, editor. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2005. Pages 1-3.]

“… anarcho-insurrectionalists in the UK have … criticised the crap we’ve come to term ‘civil anarchism’, which like good citizens continues to talk and walk the road of obedience to the State and the reactionary mores of Society.…

“The “civil anarchist” phenomena is not confined to the workerist scene of internet forums and pub get-togethers but likewise includes the soggy camp of the eco-activists. These two poles of the official movement are based around on the one hand—the formal Anarchist Federation (AFed-IFA), the Solidarity Federation (SolFed-IWA) and the web collective Libcom; and on the other hand Earth First! respectively, with local groupings and scenes gravitating towards these national tendencies.”

[Darko Matthers, “Introducing….” Anarchy – Civil or Subversive? Darko Matthers, editor. Berlin, Germany: 325. 2013. Pages 3-7.]

“The critique of ‘civil anarchism’ … has revitalised a needed rebuke against a typically British (but not only) line of thought. The critique hasn’t yet aimed to be comprehensive or even far-reaching, as it consists of only a few sketches, but it has hit a nerve. For the best part of a decade civil anarchism in Britain has been perfecting its theoretical denunciations unchallenged, so it is refreshing to see it being taken to task. This fragment is meant to be another contribution to refresh this critique of ‘civil anarchism’ with some of my thoughts.…

“Civil anarchism is not so much a political current, but an open term to be used to outline the refuge of cowardly, reformist and collaborative individuals that use anarchism as a crutch to escape the repression in society and the necessity to act.…

“I have nothing against mass organisation per se and see it as an observably fundamental principle of almost all revolutionary activity, but from being close to this ‘civil anarchism’ for a considerable time, and having had space to consider its present development and direction, I believe this flock to have serious problems with allowing diversity of opinion and perspectives to be expressed that counters the group-think ‘party line.’

“As anarchists, they believe in their heart, or at least their propaganda extols as much, that the human being, the bad animal, can be redeemed by their political program. Leaving that question aside for the moment, as anarchists we appear to share more than we disagree about, and I concede that followed to their conclusions the ideas of the civil anarchists could be congruent with a social insurrection, but I doubt they will be.

“In Britain, one of the key values of civil anarchism seems to be activist political work as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end; so, instead of moving towards social conflict and insurrection, it placed itself inside a small niche in the media/ political-spectacle and largely avoids the necessity to put itself at risk. It can do this also because ‘democracy’ as a concept has been so completely misused for the neo-liberal project that an attempt to clean up its image and ‘get back to true and participatory democracy’ (or citizenship and civil investment in government) is beginning to seem radical (although it is not). Anarchist legalism does not claim it’s force of negation, but becomes indistinguishable from the democratic politics it pretends to go beyond. Civil anarchism will never evolve into an identifiable feature of conflict on the social terrain, because it has no specific nature, it follows the footsteps of the crowd and jealously picks at the heads of those who dare calculate their refusal ahead of the rest.”

[L, “Subversive disassociation.” Anarchy – Civil or Subversive? Darko Matthers, editor. Berlin, Germany: 325. 2013. Pages 8-11.]

“During the late 1970s and early 1980s there was in Canada a large anarchist community that was particularly active in the prison abolition, feminist, Native, environmental, and Third World solidarity movements. While still working within these movements, some anarchists began to adopt direct action tactics that went beyond the legal boundaries defined by the state. They took up direct action not because they couldn’t control their rage, but as part of a long-term strategy to build a revolutionary movement that would be beyond the control of corporations and the state. An even smaller group within this movement decided to start a guerrilla campaign — going underground to avoid possible arrest and imprisonment. I was part of a guerrilla group that we called Direct Action.” [Ann Hansen. Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2002. Page xi.]

“Every action tells a tale, and we carefully craft the tale we want to tell. We steer away from the old tales of martyrdom and virtue. What we’re saying is ‘Look! A new force is rising in up in the world, so creative, so vital, so full of life and passion and freedom that no system of control can withstand it. And you can be a part of it. Yes, you’ll face great risks and danger, but you will have friends with you, amazing, wonderful, mythical, magical comrades all around the globe. And you will be part of creating the most amazing transformation the world has ever seen.’ Empowering Direct Action looks for ways to embody our vision in the face of power, to get in the way of its workings, to interrupt its consolidation with our embodied alternatives. The movement has already begun experimenting with new forms of resistance that may be the first steps along the path that leads to the morning. Reclaim the Streets throws a party in an intersection and takes back urban space. The fence at Quebec is contested with a carnival: a catapult lobs teddy bears over the chain links. The White Overalls create moving barricades of inner tubes and balloons, padding themselves to walk through police lines. The Pagan Cluster moves as a Living River through the streets. The pink bloc dances through the tear gas of Genoa. The Zapatistas deplore the necessity of carrying arms and issue mystic communiqués. Protesters snake-march through the streets of Toronto, outflanking the police while avoiding clashes. Gas masks are covered with glitter and rhinestones. All of these actions change the categories and challenge our expectations. They favor mobility, surprise, and creativity over static, predictable tactics. They may involve risk of arrest, but getting arrested is not the goal and protesters may actively seek to avoid it. They maximize respect for life in its fullness: erotic, angry, joyful, loving, wild, and free. And they are only the beginning of the experiment. No matter how we may stumble in the cold of night, the sun must eventually illuminate a new path that we can walk with joy and courage in our bodies of earth and flesh and desire.” [Starhawk. Direct Action Survival Guide. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. No pagination.]

“Direct action brought to its ultimate and logical end is the libertarian social revolution: the working class’s direct overtaking, rearrangement, transformation and deconstruction (when not found appropriate to human needs) of the means of production (the material tools of freedom), and the disarmament of the forces protecting the order that was. If we are talking about a genuine social revolution, this can be nothing but the collective, direct action by the working class abolishing itself as a class, and thus the state and class society as such, making us all into citizens of a world of our own making.

“Many are those who talk about direct actions these days, fewer try to explore its meaning, asking what kind of tool it is. This is not a semantic question but one of substance – one that lies at the core of the whole anarchist, social-revolutionary project where ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves,’ and the means are determined by and contained in our ends. From this perspective we can define direct action as being an action carried out on the behalf of nobody else but ourselves, where the means are immediately also the ends, or if not, as in a wage strike not mediated by any union bureaucracy, the means (decreasing the bosses’ profits by our non-work, and thus also diminishing the bosses’ power) stand in an immediate relationship to self-defined ends (increasing our wages and extending our own power). A direct action successfully carried out brings about a direct rearrangement of existing conditions of life through the combined efforts of those directly affected.”

[Harald Beyer-Arnesen. Direct Action: Towards an Understanding of a Concept. Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 2015. Page 1.]

“The majority of thinking people are really opportunist, leaning, some perhaps more to directness, some more to indirectness as a general thing, but ready to use either means when opportunity calls for it. That is to say, there are those who hold that balloting governors into power is essentially a wrong and foolish thing; but who nevertheless under stress of special circumstances, might consider it the wisest thing to do, to vote some individual into office at that particular time. Or there are those who believe that in general the wisest way for people to get what they want is by the indirect method of voting into power some one who will make what they want legal; yet who all the same will occasionally under exceptional conditions advise a strike; and a strike, as I have said, is direct action. Or they may do as the Socialist Party agitators (who are mostly declaiming now against direct action) did last summer, when the police were holding up their meetings. They went in force to the meeting-places, prepared to speak whether-or-no, and they made the police back down. And while that was not logical on their part, thus to oppose the legal executors of the majority’s will, it was a fine, successful piece of direct action.” [Voltairine de Cleyre. Direct Action. Jacksonville, Florida: Infoshop. 2015. Page 3.]

“… whereas the cheerleaders of capitalism’s apparent victory over so-called communism initially declared the end of history …, we have instead seen capitalism morph and flex over the years, creating new and unforeseen constellations of exploitation and struggle. Despite such acute political economic and sociocultural transformations, the possibilities that anarchist geographies might hold for geographical scholarship and broader strategies of political action are, to us, as relevant and potent as ever. The selective memories of humanity’s past, the impoverished dialogues of the present, and the static visions of a supposedly predetermined future that pervade both academic and popular discourses are a testament to the paucity of the political imagination in the current conjuncture. While neoliberal apostles of the post-political consensus imagine that our world is best served by the achievement of an integrated global village …, and geographers have responded with a variety of critiques ….” [Simon Springer, Anthony Ince, Jenny Pickerill, Gavin Brown, and Adam J. Barker, “Reanimating Anarchist Geographies: A New Burst of Colour.” Antipode. Volume 44, number 5, November 2012. Pages 591-1604.]

“I do not see a solution to alienation, disempowerment and their many associated maladies in the direction which we find ourselves moving, which is apparently deemed by most to be the right direction. Oh, people disagree on lots of things. One thinks abortion should be illegal, the other does not. One thinks the rich should pay aid to the poor, the other does not. Differences of values (particular or systematised) are common as muck. But so far as I can tell most people either explicitly support or take as a given certain elementary contemporary social relations – i.e. the State, urbanisation, the systematic prostitution of labour. In fact, let’s be obscenely reductive and coin a little slogan for the underlying norm:

“‘The State must be wise, the Citizen must be righteous, the Economy must be fair, and the Nation must be united.’

“You see why I said reductive. I could have worded it differently (for example, the Economy must be ‘productive’ might be more representative in the long term) but it gets across my gist in a snappy way. The correct meanings behind ‘wise,’ ‘righteous,’ ‘fair’ and even ‘united’ are the sort of things debated endlessly among disciples of the ten thousand ideologies worldwide. But statism, citizenship, industry, and nationhood in themselves – these criterion go largely unmolested outside of very radical (read ‘extremely niche’) circles. Even grand revolutions mark and formalise a transformation in dominant values and a shift in socio-economic roles, but still have an element of conservatism insofar as they do not challenge what I’m going to dryly call the ‘Metropolis Doctrine.’

“The Metropolis doctrine is a way of looking at social organisation from an urban perspective. This is the perspective largely represented in historical philosophy because the philosophers have always been city folk. I doubt tribal and rural peoples have over the centuries had much need for political philosophy, because they have not perceived any essential social crisis. Their small-scale, communitarian, local systems have usually functioned quite acceptably for them. From economics to ethics to conflict resolution, they have had their own ways of doing things which for us in the so-called ‘developed world’ are often tacitly dismissed as, if not ‘primitive,’ certainly ‘traditional.’

“As certain settled areas became particularly population dense, and the city was born, problems naturally arose – problems which have and will further be discussed throughout this essay. Population had passed the point at which a natural coherence can cope. The social environment was becoming less intimate, less truly ‘local,’ and evolving into a constant to and fro of strangers – an aggregate of alien and changing elements. It’s no great leap to assume this significantly affects human thinking and behaviour.

“Metropolitan life is a life of constant crisis because it is continually dogged by the question of how to resolve the disputes and make it function correctly or ideally – based on the assumption that it can actually do so. Besides that, it is by its nature a perpetual stumbling block in our need for intimacy because it has as its foundation strangeness. In fact, we might literally say that it is ‘organised estrangement.’

“The Metropolis Doctrine has been spread widely across the globe, often by the sword or some more subtle form of coercion, and usually under impetus of imperialism or colonialism. Where indigenous identity could not be stamped out, it was more-or-less integrated. Christian missions, for example, when attempting to convert local populations from their religion, often allow apparently un-Christian beliefs and practices to remain as traditions so long as they are subordinated to Christianity.

“The industrial revolution (among other things) was a more recent factor in accelerating urbanisation, as it refocused production away from rural areas, villages and small towns, to large towns and cities. Although that’s not to imply there had been no shift to the Metropolis Doctrine taking place before then. But the city was turned into an economic hub way beyond what it had been, causing even more people to flock to them, and a concomitant increase in density.

“Whilst the convenient notion that we have a duty to ‘civilize’ indigenous and isolated people has waned in its more vulgar forms, it continues in the belief that we do the righteous thing by spreading Western style liberal-democracy and Western values – moral, economic and social – to the rest of the world. Of course, even when it is born of war, it is not seen as imposition, it is seen as giving them something that they have an innate desire for. In some cases, the desire is indeed present, particularly in moderately industrialised nations with a history of totalitarian rule. But the Metropolis Doctrine is not god-given, is not a proven, infallible, universal ideal, and should not be envisaged as such. Naturally it suits State and Capital that the rest of the world should follow along because then they have more pockets to dig into, more lives to control, and more friends to play with. But the average Afghan farmer who finds himself in the middle of a war for his soul could give as little of a fuck about liberal democracy as he does the salafism of the Taliban. He just wants to be left alone.”

[Bad Moon. Metropolis… By Strange Command: A Deconstruction Manifesto. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 9-10.]

“I almost lost my faith in anarchism. I almost decided to have nothing more to do with it all. After a few days, though, I came to my senses. I decided that the anarchist ideal was above such squabbles. They might not want to be true anarchists, but I did. They might merely want to play at being libertarians, but I did not. If they could only find the strength to fight when clinging to each other and creating amongst themselves a new simulacrum of the tyranny they claimed they wanted to combat, then let them, the fools; that was all they were good for. I wasn’t going to become a bourgeois for such piffling reasons.

“I had established that, in the true anarchism, each person had to create freedom and combat social fictions by his own efforts. Well, then, that was what I would do. No one wanted to follow me along the true anarchist path, so I would walk it alone, with my own resources, with my own faith, without even the moral support of those who had once been my comrades in order to do battle with the social fictions. I’m not saying it was a beautiful or even a heroic gesture. It was a natural gesture. If the road had to be walked by each person separately, then I didn’t need anyone else to walk down it with me. All I needed were my ideals. Those were the principles and the circumstances that decided me to do what I could to combat social fictions—alone.”

[Fernando Pessoa. The Anarchist Banker. Margaret Jull Costa, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1922. Page 13.]

“Anarchist theory has a long-standing history in political theory, sociology, and philosophy. As a radical discourse, anarchist theory pushes educators and researchers towards new conceptualizations of community, theory, and praxis. Early writers, like Joseph Proudhoun and Emma Goldman, to more contemporary anarchists, such as Noam Chomsky, have established anarchist theory as an important school of thought that sits outside the Marxist discourses that have dominated the radical academic scene. Today, anarchists have been responsible for staging effective protests (specifically, Seattle, 1999) and have influenced autonomous groups like the Animal Liberation Front in their organizational and guiding philosophies. Interestingly, anarchism is glaringly absent from the literature in educational theory and research. In this article, I highlight aspects of anarchist theory that are particularly applicable to education, and also establishes specific ways that anarchist theory can inform one’s own educational praxis. Specifically, I employ the anarchist framework of direct action and micro-level strategies, such as sabotage, that challenge people to resist the oppressive practices found in institutions today.” [Abraham DeLeon. Oh No, Not the “A” word! Proposing an “Anarchism” for Education. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2008. Page 3.]

“‘Direct Action’ is a form of creative resistance, and has to be understood as part of an intervention against power and exploitation as well as a step towards visionary, emancipatory forms of society.

“‘Direct Action’ is a method, a concept, a way of thinking… Undertake responsibility, do it yourself, think about how you would want it to be and go in this direction. Don’t ask for permission. Be a spanner in their wheels. Do it yourself.…

“These [affinity groups] are small groups of people who prepare for and take action together. Affinity groups are organised in a non-hierarchical and self-sufficient way and can either act on their own or as an autonomous group within larger protests. Working in an affinity group is your best protection in the course of the action.

“Roles and tasks can be split up between members, and you can support each other emotionally and in case of arrest or injury. A good size is 6-12 people. It’s useful to form sub groups of 3-4 people who act as buddies.

“Within the group share your hopes, fears, experiences, strengths and weaknesses. Agree on the form of the action in advance (how willing to risk arrest, the limits of your involvement, how non-violent, how spiky etc.)

“Stick together – work as a team. Agree on a short name for your group which can easily be shouted and recognised, in case your group is split up and you get lost.”

[Anonymous. Direct Action Handbook. Schifflange, Luxembourg: LIFE asbl. 2005. No pagination.]

“… there is meta-theory: an anarchist theory of theory, including an anarchist theory about anarchist theory. What is the role of theory in the anarchist project? Should theory include both simple and complex facets and, if so, how should the complex aspects relate to the simple bits? How and to what extent can theory become a collective project, linked with practice? Is there a simple way to learn how to develop theory, so that lots of people can join in?” [Brian Martin, “Anarchist Theory: What Should Be Done?” Anarchist Studies. Volume 15, number 2, autumn–winter 2007. Pages 106-108.]

“A revolutionary ecology movement must also organize among poor and working people. With the exception of the toxics movement and the native land rights movement most US envimentalists are white and privileged. This group is too invested in the system to pose it much of a threat. A revolutionary ideology in the hands of privileged people can indeed bring about some disruption and change in the system. But a revolutionary ideology in the hands of working people can bring the system to a halt. For it is the working people who have their hands on the machinery. And only by stopping the machinery of destruction can we ever hope to stop this madness. How can it be that we have neighborhood movements focused on the disposal of toxic wastes, for example, but we don’t have a workers’ movement to stop the production of toxics? It is only when the factory workers refuse to make the stuff, it is only when the loggers refuse to cut ancient trees, that we cars ever hope for real and lasting change. This system cannot be stopped by force. It is violent and ruthless beyond the capacity of any people’s resistance movement. The only way I can even imagine stopping is is through massive noncooperation.

“So let’s keep blocking those bulldozers and hugging those trees. And let’s focus our campaigns on the global corporations that are really at fault. But we have to begin placing our actions in a larger context. And we must continue the discussion to develop a workable theory of revolutionary ecology.”

[Judi Bari. Revolutionary Ecology: biocentrism & deep ecology. Garberville, California: Trees Foundation. 1998. No pagination.]

“It is common practice in many anarchist circles to pay lip service to a critique of the institutions of patriarchy and heterosexuality and to make at least some (often vague and half-hearted) effort to reject gender roles. Frequently, however, the analysis that is put forth is weak and superficial and becomes fixated around creating single-gender spaces as well as using spellings such as ‘wimmin’ and ‘humyn’ and referring to all individuals as ‘co’ or ‘they.’ There is little attempt made to examine what is at the root of gender, sexuality, patriarchy, and domination or to discuss what tactical measures can be taken to dismantle them.

“Heterosexuality is a patriarchal system that sets up rigid guidelines and power relations for individuals to interact within. Heterosexuality exists within this society as an institution, a social contract, and as well, as an identity category that is used to shape individual experience into a single, collective, and homogenous classification. Discourses such as queer theory often describe heterosexuality as being violent, dominating, and repressive. However, such discourses generally present this as being somehow unique to the system of heterosexuality while describing alternative systems, such as homosexuality, as being inherently libratory. This argument overlooks the nature of categorization upon which heterosexuality and homosexuality are both based.

“All institutions, social contracts, and classifications are based on denying our individual desires in order to engage in predetermined interactions with others. Any time a label or definition is applied to human existence there is the necessity of creating set boundaries where certain behaviors fit within the category created and certain others do not. This defining of lived experience creates limits on what is acceptable and then pushes individuals to try and live by these limits. These limits rule our lives. They destroy our ability to make our own decisions and to relate to the world in a subjective, spontaneous manner.”

[Wildflower. Pieces of Self: Anarchy, Gender, and Other Thoughts. Santa Cruz, California: Quiver Distribution and Press. Public domain. 2005. Page 18.]

“Although it is important to deconstruct set categories of identity it is hard to deny that there are occasions when these categories can help create healing spaces and relationships. I would like to acknowledge that historically there is a measurable difference between the experiences of those who have been called male and those who have been called female. To not acknowledge that people with certain (perceived or real) attributes, identities, or bodies have faced incredible violence, humiliation, and limitations on their freedom because of these attributes is to rewrite history in a problematic and negligible way. Because of the violence caused by patriarchy that has been disproportionately unleashed upon those perceived to be female and those perceived to be GLBTIQ₂ [Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered, Intersex, Queer/Questioning], individuals facing violence often desire to create safe spaces along lines of identity. I would like to suggest, however, that the healing that can come from womenʼs only spaces is created by shared experiences and not by shared identities. There is no reason that (for example) a person who identifies as a bisexual female and a person who identifies as a heterosexual male could not come together over a shared experience of being raped and support each otherʼs healing processes. This in fact might be more of a beneficial experience, for example, than the same woman sharing her experience with another self identified bisexual female who has never had the subjective experience of being raped. Trying to put set limits on our identities and interactions can severely impact our capacity to have amazing, healthy, loving relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the world around us.” [Wildflower. Pieces of Self: Anarchy, Gender, and Other Thoughts. Santa Cruz, California: Quiver Distribution and Press. Public domain. Page 22.]

“Mass confinement is primarily a form of protection to ensure the smooth running of the system of private property, capitalism and authoritarian rule. The vast majority of prisoners are there principally because they have committed crimes against, or in pursuit of, property. Prisons expand and become more developed and necessary as a gap between the rich and poor is created and increases. They clearly reflect the race and class divisions of the system, and are an obvious form of social control aimed at the most precarious sectors of society.

“… Prisons do not rehabilitate or reform, they only brutalise. Modern industrial society creates a production line of damaged individuals whose only remedy proscribed by the system are punishment, confinement and death. Prisons only hide the contradictions of the free market and the financial system; they do not resolve the problems of long term abuse, unstable family background, drug addiction, and mental sickness. Present society is a persisting nightmare of illusion, desire for impossible consumption and total obedience to money. This unjust capitalist system through its own contradictions, has produced ‘deviance’ and ‘anti-social behaviour,‘ and hidden away in cells all those who are unfortunate enough not to find a privileged outlet for themselves. The professional psychopaths, sociopaths and abusers find a sure position for themselves in politics, military or industry. All prisoners deserve a retrial without a biased capitalist judicial process. Without liberation of the poor and an equal access to quality housing, healthy food and meaningful lives, this culture of fear and domination will remain. All solutions to the problems of reinsertion and ‘anti-social behaviour’ are to be found in the community itself, and no-where else besides it.…

“The ‘War on Drugs’ is a weapon used to fight imperialist wars against rebellious autonomous populations and individuals. It has created a specific class of people that feed the prison industry with bodies and labour, and provide a pretext for war against any social movements that oppose capitalist hegemony. Drug economy workers are an underclass of people struggling to survive, and prohibition is about the suppression of their economy, to prevent their means of existing outside the system, or of the various gangs that maintain it. Prohibition of drugs is also specifically aimed at censoring the alteration of consciousness; to maintain psychological control and prevent subversion of the narrow limits of lived experience allowed by society and culture.”

[Editor, “Why Anti-Prison?” 325. Number 4, April 2007. Page 10.]

“The Spanish Revolution of 1936-1939 came closer to realizing the ideal of the free stateless society on a vast scale than any other revolution in history, including the aborted Russian Revolution of 1917. In fact, they were two very different kinds of revolution. The Spanish Revolution is an example of a libertarian social revolution where genuine workers’ self-management was successfully tried. It represents a way of organizing society that is increasingly important today. The Bolshevik Revolution, by contrast, was controlled by an elite party and was a political revolution. It set the doleful pattern for the authoritarian state capitalist revolutions in Eastern Europe, Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam), and Latin America (Cuba).” [Sam Dolgoff, “The Spanish Revolution.” The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-management in the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939. Sam Dolgoff, editor. New York: Free Life Editions, Inc. 1974. Pages 5-18.]

“There is a stream of radical economic thought that courses through theories and practices of autogestión, or workers’ self-management: Working people must free themselves from the oppressions inherent to hierarchical forms of power that, in capitalism, is embodied to a great extent in wage slavery and its exploitative mode of production. The pursuit of this freedom is nothing less than the struggle for workers and communities to self-determine their own productive lives.… For social anarchists, this struggle for self-determination becomes particularly pertinent when a small group – capitalists – have most of their needs and wants met via the labors of a vastly larger group – workers – that remain with many of their needs and desires unmet. A continuing faith in human beings’ capacities for cooperation via the self-management of their productive lives has been at the heart of this vision for the free society for the better part of the past two centuries, influencing other libertarian socialist ideas and movements. This can be conceived of as the stream of self-determination coursing through the theories and practices of autogestión.” [Marcelo Vieta, “The stream of self-determination and autogestión: Prefiguring alternative economic realities.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, November 2014. Pages 781-809.]

“One of the great secrets of our miserable yet potentially marvellous time is that thinking can be a pleasure. This is a manual for constructing your own self-theory. Constructing your self-theory is a revelutionary pleasure, the pleasure of constructing your self-theory of revolution.

“Building your self-theory is a destructive/constructive pleasure, because you are building a theory-of-practice for the destructive/constructive transformation of this society.

“Self-theory is a theory of adventure. It is as erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.

“The alienation felt as a result of having had your thinking done for you by the ideologies of our day, can lead to the search for the pleasurable negation of that alienation: thinking for yourself. It is the pleasure of making your mind your own.

“Self-theory is the body of critical thought you construct for your own use. You construct it and use it when you make an analysis of why your life is the way it is, why the world is the way it is. (And ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ are inseparable, since thought comes from subjective, emotive experience.) You build your self-theory when you develop a theory of practice — a theory of how to get what you desire for your life.

“Theory will be either a practical theory — a theory of revolutionary practice — or it will be nothing… nothing but an aquarium of ideas, a contemplative interpretation of the world. The realm of ideals is the eternal waiting-room of unrealised desire.

“Those who assume (usually unconsciously) the impossibility of realising their life’s desires, and of thus fighting for themselves, usually end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead (ie the illusion of selfactivity or self-practice). Those who know that this is the acceptance of alienation will now know that all ideals and causes are ideologies.”

[Larry Law. Revolutionary Self-Theory. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1975. Page 3.]

“This synthetic / dialectic method of constructing a theory [revolutionary self-theory] is counter to the eclectic style which just collects a rag-bag of its favourite bits from favourite ideologies without ever confronting the resulting contradictions. Modern examples include libertarian capitalism, christian marxism and liberalism in general.” [Larry Law. Revolutionary Self-Theory. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1975. Page 8.]

“Larry Law, writer, publisher and anarchist, died in the early hours of Friday 22ⁿᵈ July 1988. He had gone to the doctor’s on Monday with a lump in his chest and was taken straight into hospital. On Thursday he underwent an exploratory operation and died in his sleep a few hours later. He had cancer of the lower bowel.” [Editor, “Are You In A Bad State.” Spectacle. 2017. Web. Retrieved on February 23rd, 2017.]

“Every one must feel that he is the supreme arbiter of his own; that no power on earth shall rise above him; that he is, and always shall be, sovereign of himself, and all that constitutes or is necessarily connected with his individuality. Let every one feel this, and they will feel that which man has always yearned and panted for, but has never realized in society—SECURITY OF PERSON AND PROPERTY.

“But how, you ask, can this be, where each is a member of the body politic—where obedience to some law or government is indispensable to the working of the political machine? If every one was ‘the law unto himself,’ all would be perfect anarchy and confusion. No doubt of this! The error lies farther back than you have contemplated; it lies in EACH ONE BEING A MEMBER OF A BODY POLITIC. WE SHOULD BE NO SUCH THING AS A BODY POLITIC! EACH MAN AND WOMAN MUST BE AN INDIVIDUAL——NO MEMBER OF ANY BODY BUT THAT OF THE HUMAN FAMILY! What is the use or origin of a body politic! Blackstone, the father of English and American law, says, ‘It is the wants and the fears of individuals which make them congregate together,’ and form society; in other words, it is for the interchange of mutual assistance, and for security of person and property, that society is originally formed. Now, if neither of these objects has ever been attained in society, and if we can show the means of attaining them, otherwise we have no reason for keeping up a body politic. With regard to economy in the supply of our wants, this will SECURITY OF PERSON AND PROPERTY. be treated of in its proper place. With regard to security, we see that in the wide range of the world’s bloody history, these is not any one horrid feature so frightful, so appalling, as the recklessness, the cold-blooded indifference with which laws and governments have sacrificed person and property in their wanton, their criminal, or ignorant pursuit of some blind passion, or unsubstantial phantom of the imagination. We have not the space, nor is it necessary, to enter into details; let the reader refer, to any page of history, let him remember that laws and governments are professedly instituted for the security of person, and property, and let him consider each page an illustration of their success, then he will be able to appreciate a proposal to secure them by some other means. The following is only an illustration.”

[Josiah Warren. Equitable Commerce: A New Development of Principles, As Substitutes For Laws And Governments, For The Harmonious Adjustment and Regulation Of The Pecuniary, Intellectual, And Moral Intercourse Of Mankind. Proposed As Elements Of New Society. New York: Fowlers and Wells, Publishers. 1852. Pages 53-54.]

“Those who have not read the first work on ‘Equitable Commerce,’ will require an explanation of the plan upon which this work is written. The subject is so immensely extensive, involving, as it does, all our intercourse as human beings, it is impossible to impress it all upon the mind at once, but it will be found that many readings and much thought will be required before it will be properly comprehended; and there are many very important points in the subject which require repeated illustrations, and these should be so arranged that the inquirer can turn to any one of them at pleasure.” [Josiah Warren. Practical Ideas in Equitable Commerce, Showing the Workings, in Actual Experiment, During a Series of Years, on the Social Principles Expounded in the Works Called “Equitable Commerce,” by the Author of this, and the “Science of Society,” by Stephen P. Andrews. New York: Fowlers and Wells, Publishers. 1854. Page 9.]

“The first corner stone of Equitable Commerce is precisely that which ‘the builders have hitherto rejected:’ it is Individuality,—exactly the opposite of Combination, United Interests, Partnerships, &c. It is the disconnection, the disunion, the disentanglement of all interests and persons. Individuality is recognised as the great principle of order, progress, and harmony. The study of Individuality prepares us to admit, and habitually to respect the Sovereignty of every Individual, over his or her person, time, and property; which I understand to be the natural, the Equitable Liberty of Mankind, and which constitutes the second corner stone of Equitable Commerce. The Individualising of all interests makes this Liberty practicable; but it is impracticable in Combinations, United Interests, Partnerships, &c.” [Josiah Warren. A Brief Outline of Equitable Commerce. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1852. Page 2.]

“Among those who consistently developed the thinking of American liberalism in the direction of industrial freedom, Josiah Warren was without doubt the most significant. Warren was born in Boston in 1798 of an old puritan family which was among the first settlers of this country. The Warren family gave to the state of Massachusetts a whole line of outstanding personalities among whom was General Joseph Warren who was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill in the Revolutionary War against England. Josiah Warren, still very much influenced by the spirit of the pioneers, came when he was 21 to Cincinnati, at that time one of the outposts of the civilization pressing to the West. He lived there as a music teacher and concert master, until the invention of a new lamp enabled him to establish a small factory which assured him a livelihood. Warren was a born inventor and, during his whole life, he was occupied with technical research. He was the father of many an invention. This inventive spirit was also noticeable in his later writings. But the life of young Warren was soon to be directed to a channel which he would not forsake until the end of his days.” [Rudolph Rocker. Pioneers of American Freedom: Origin of Liberal and Radical Thought in America. Arthur E. Briggs, translator. Los Angeles, California: Rocker Publications Committee. 1949. Page 52.]

“People ask me about what I want to do in the future, about having children, all that. As for a nice wife and fast-track career and fancy house and all that, I’m a grown man now and I find it hard to believe I’ll have a reverse mid-life crisis and wish that I’d traded everything I’ve had for that bullshit. Honestly, even if I die tomorrow, I think the last ten years of adventure have been worth more to me than fifty years of any other life could be. I’ve had conflicts where I’ve been romantically involved with people who haven’t been ready to go as far out as I am, but you can resolve those conflicts, it’s not impossible—and I don’t want to he involved with anyone who won’t accept my way of life, that’s ridiculous. As for kids, I think there are a lot of good reasons not to have children and right now I don’t think I’ll ever really want to. But I help my friends with their children, so I’m not excluding them from the possibility of enjoying this lifestyle. A couple good friends of mine are single mothers and I do what I can to babysit, bring them vegetables from our garden, that stuff. They’re both awesome, still able to do a lot of great social work—although I’d like to mention that the welfare system in this country is totally fucked and provides no support for people like them, especially when they’re trying to do good things for other people with their lives. But anyway, it’ll be really interesting to see how those children grow up.” [Markatos in Tricks of the Tradeless: Interviews with the gainfully unemployed. Pensacola, Florida: Overground Distribution. 2006. Creative Commons. No pagination.]

“In opposing contributions or amalgamated interests, Individuality does not oppose, but favors and conducts toward co-operation. But, on the other hand, Individuality alone is not sufficient to insure co-operation. It is an essential clement of co-operative harmony, but not the only one. It is one principle in the science of society, but it is not the whole of that science. Other elements are indispensable to the right working of the system, one of which has been adverted to. The error has been in supposing that because the Individuality which is already realized in society has not ultimated in harmony, that Individuality itself is in fault. Instead of destroying this one true element of order, and returning to a worse condition from which we have emerged, the scientific method is to investigate further, and find what other or complimentary principles are necessary to complete the well-working of the social machinery.” [Stephen Pearl Andrews. The Science of Society.—No. 1—The True Constitution of Government in the Sovereignty of the Individual as the Final Development of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism. Third edition. New York: T. L. Nichols. 1854. Pages 69-70.]

“It has been the function of writers and preachers upon Morals, hitherto, to inculcate the duty of submitting to the exigencies of false social relations. The Science of Society teaches, on the other hand, the rectification of those relations themselves. So long as men find themselves embarrassed by complicated connections of interest, so that the consequences of their acts inevitably devolve upon others, the highest virtue consists in mutual concessions and abnegation of selfhood. Hence, the necessity for Ethics, in that stage of progress, to en force the reluctant sacrifice, by stringent appeals to the conscience. The truest condition of society, however, is that in which each individual is enabled and con strained to assume, to the greatest extent possible, the Cost or disagreeable consequences of his own acts. That condition of society can only arise from a general disintegration of interests—from rendering the interests of all as completely individual as their persons. The Science of Society teaches the means of that individualization of interests, coupled, however, with co-operation. Hence it graduates the individual, so to speak, out of the sphere of Ethics into that of Personality— out of the sphere of duty or submission to the wants of others, into the sphere of integral development and freedom. Hence the Science of Society may be said to absorb the Science of Ethics as it does that of Political Economy, while it teaches far more exactly the limits of right by defining the true relations of men.” [Stephen Pearl Andrews. The Science of Society.—No. 2—Cost the Limit of Price: Scientific Measure of Honesty in Trad as One of the Fundamental Principles in the Solution of the Social Problem. Third edition. New York: T. L. Nichols. 1854. Page 15.]

“This essay explores the rise of populist demagogues and the economics of their regimes. Rather than marking a clear break with neoliberalism or a direct tie to early twentieth century fascism, these figures historically connect to the regime of Augusto Pinochet and illustrate a growing trend of authoritarian-neoliberalism.…

“… just because the United States’ enforcement of its will across the entirety of a hemisphere has been dampened, does not mean that the ghosts of its imperial past do not still haunt the world. Pinochet’s model of governance in particular seems to have remarkable significance in the present day; this model of authoritarian governance and ruthless market liberalism is being globalized by the rise of right-wing populism, returning home to the United States in the form of Donald Trump. This same legacy can also be seen in Narendra Modi of India, Vladamir Putin of Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, or in events such as Brexit, which indicate the rising power of a broader right-wing populism sweeping the world, particularly—though by no means exclusively—in developed nations. While the sentiments motivating it are often quite different, the results have been a doubling down on globalized capital under a more authoritarian state structure.”

[Anonymous. Authoritarian Neoliberalism: The Specter of Pinochet. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 1-2.]

“Plagiarism is stealing. Plagiarism is theft. Plagiarism is cheating. Plagiarism is immoral. Plagiarism is done by bad and lazy students. Plagiarism is the nemesis of creative, individual genius. Plagiarism is a crime. Plagiarism is a nuisance to the machinations of the university. Plagiarism is bullshit.

“Plagiarism criminalities and covers over a better conversation about sharing sampling collusion, collaboration and conspiring Plagiarism polices the borders of a fictive individual to allow collective thought to be cut into portions, priced and packaged as intellectual property. Plagiarism is one of the poorly paid security guards of private property. Plagiarism discourages people from working together and thinking of study as a collective project. Policed plagiarism allows history to be told in the proper names of singularly great people. Plagiarism is a denial of the way thought and ideas are actually produced. Plagiarism is a dirty name for the system of shared knowledge that we collectively inherit and the collective knowledge production that is supposedly what we do at university. Hard to put a price tag on, though. Precisely where plagiarism steps in with super back-to-school savings on cut-price thought. Everyone does it, just not everyone is punished for it.”

[University for Strategic Optimism. Undressing the Academy, or The Student Handjob. London and New York: Minor Compositions an imprint of Autonomedia. 2011. Page 51.]

“Anarchic/ist experiences and projects have always had a remarkable territorial dimension and this is beginning to be widely recognized (or conceived). The territorial dimension not only refers to geographical localization but also to the capacity and potential to construct ‘spaces’ and ‘places,’ outside of dominion relations space (like statist space), based on egalitarian and anti-authoritarian relations, non-hierarchical social practices, collective and individual autonomy, cooperative structures, etc. So anarchic/ist spaces and places can be defined as the (constructed) territories based on and due to anarchist principles and peoples, much like stateless peoples spaces, libertarian communities, social centres, municipios libres [free municipalities], Spanish Revolution collectivizations, Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs), situations construites [constructed situations], parties, revolts, etc., everywhere and anytime.” [Xavier Oliveras González. Deny Anarchic Spaces and Places: An Anarchist Critique of Mosaic-Statist Metageography. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 3.]

“Their [state’s] putative value as maintainers of social order might be thought to render their actions justifiable (when the prohibitions they violate are not exceptionless, so that no violation would be defensible); but, in fact, there are multiple reasons to think they are not needed to maintain social order, and further reasons to believe they actively undermine it and cause serious harm to people’s interests. Consensual legal institutions can justly enforce law; we do not need territorial monopolists for that. The law they enforce should leave people as free as possible and should focus on remedying injuries rather than on punishing or deterring. This kind of law will create space for the emergence of a free culture and will facilitate effective responses to such problems as poverty and workplace hierarchy. Links with English and American radicalism justify seeing this kind of anarchist approach as rooted in the socialist tradition.” [Gary Chartier, “Left-Wing Market Anarchism and Natural Law.” Studies in Emergent Order. Volume 7, 2014. Pages 314-324.]

“Left-libertarianism in the relevant sense is a position that is simultaneously leftist & libertarian.…

“That is, left-wing market anarchism.…

“While rejecting capitalism, left-libertarians share with other libertarians an enthusiastic recognition of the value of markets. They stress that both parties to a voluntary exchange participate because they prefer it and believe it will benefit them; that prices provide excellent guides for producers and distributors (far better than anything a central planner could offer); and that people should internalize the costs as well as the benefits of their choices. But they emphasize that background injustice can distort markets and constrain traders’ options. They also note that commercial exchange does not exhaust the sphere of peaceful, voluntary cooperation and that people can and should cooperate in multiple ways—playful, solidaristic, compassionate — that need not be organized along commercial lines.”

[Gary Chartier, “The Distinctiveness of Left-Libertarianism.” Market Anarchy. Number 41, May 2013. Pages 1-10.]

“With so many different interpretations, which run the gamut from spot-on to the exceedingly problematic, it might seem like an inescapable cul-de-sac to look to their works for elucidating power dynamics in the world today. Their capture by the academy, that assembly-line of homogeneous thought, only compounds this weariness. It is my contention, nonetheless, that [Gilles] Deleuze and [Félix] Guattari (henceforth D & G) has much to offer us today, and constitute a radical break (or, in their lingo, a schiz) is the annals of leftist theory that points the way towards a vision of the future that is similar to what Benjamin Tucker described as ‘anarchistic socialist’ – or, in the parlance of today, left-wing market anarchism.” [Edmund Berger. Deleuze, Guattari and Market Anarchism. Tulsa, Oklahoma: Center for a Stateless Society. 2017. Page 2.]

“I will proceed in three stages. First, I will show how, in the light of market-anarchist class theory, an historical approach condemns existing inequalities rather than legitimating them. Second, I will argue that its condemnation is more effective – in a sense of ‘more effective’ to be explained – than that of its end-oriented rivals. Finally, I will address a common objection to the feasibility of implementing this conception of distributive justice in the context of a market-anarchist legal system.” [Roderick T. Long, “Left-Libertarianism, Market Anarchism, Class Conflict and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice.” Griffith Law Review. Volume 21, number 2, 2012. Pages 413-431.]

“Radicals of the sort who used to be Marxists are now attracted by free market anarchism, which, like Marxism, is systematic and elaborated in books. Free market anarchists tend to think in grand schemes and grandly successive epochs, as Marxists do. But best of all, and just like Marxism, free market anarchism frightens the horses.

“Because of its radical disruptiveness, free market anarchism fits better with the orthodoxy of most universities than do the more three-piece-suited versions of the free market. Free market anarchism is, approximately speaking, politically correct. To put it at its most tactical and superficial, free market anarchist posters in universities are less likely to be torn down by red fascists than are posters of a more conventionally pro-capitalist sort.”

[Brian Micklethwait, “Why I Call Myself a Free Market Anarchist and Why I am One.” Political Notes. Number 67, 1992. Pages 1-4.]

“Under market anarchy, all aspects of social intercourse would be ‘regulated’ by voluntary contracts. Specialized firms would probably provide standardized forms so that new contracts wouldn’t have to be drawn up every time people did business. For example, if a customer bought something on installment, the store would probably have him sign a form that said something to the effect, ‘I agree to the provisions of the 2002 edition Standard Deferred Payment Procedures as published by the Ace legal firm.’ …

“Under this system, legal experts would draft the ‘laws of the land,’ not corrupt and inept politicians. And these experts would be chosen in open competition with all rivals. Right now one can buy ‘definitive’ style manuals for writing term papers, or dictionaries of the English language. The government doesn’t need to establish the ‘experts’ in these fields. It would be the same way with private legal contracts. Everybody knows the ‘rules’ of grammar just like everyone would know what’s ‘legal’ and what isn’t.”

[Robert P. Murphy. Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy. New York: RJ Communications LLC. 2002. Page 13.]

“If people die because of a new drug that the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] has approved, the FDA will be blamed. But if people die because the FDA has not approved a new drug, it won’t be held accountable; the sickness itself will be blamed. Consequently, many potentially life-saving drugs are currently being withheld from dying patients. In a purely free market, patients would be allowed to take whatever drugs they wanted.” [Robert P. Murphy. Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy. New York: RJ Communications LLC. 2002. Page 28.]

“That the distinguishing feature of politics is the existence of a subject who ‘rules’ by the very fact of having no qualifications to rule; that the principle of beginnings/ruling is irremediably divided as a result of this, and that the political community is specifically a litigious community – this is the ‘political secret’ that philosophy first encounters.…

“… expulsion does not simply take place in the form of the opposition between the ‘good’ regime of the community that is both one and hierarchised according to its principle of unity, and the ‘bad’ regimes of division and disorder. It takes place within the very presupposition that identifies a political form with a way of life; and this presupposition is already operating in the procedures for describing ‘bad’ regimes, and democracy in particular. All of politics, as we have said, is played out in the interpretation of democratic ‘anarchy.’ In identifying it with the dispersal of the desires of democratic man, Plato transforms the form of politics into a mode of existence and, further, transforms the void into an overflow. Before being the theorist of the ‘ideal’ or ‘enclosed’ city-state, Plato is the founder of the anthropological conception of the political, the conception that identifies politics with the deployment of the properties of a type of man or a mode of life. This kind of ‘man,’ this ‘way of being,’ this form of the city-state: it is there, before any discourse on the laws or the educational methods of the ideal state, before even the partition of the classes of the community, the partition of the perceptible that cancels out political singularity.”

[Jacques Rancière, “Ten Theses on Politics.” Theory & Event. Volume 5, issue 3, 2001. Pagination unknown.]

“Having brought large segments of the population to a general aware ness of the need for change along a broad spectrum of areas, the counter elites have proved unable to take the necessary next step and provide a solu tion. Meanwhile, the existing elite, unable any longer to ignore or deny the need, has proved equally unable to do anything meaningful about it; it is this impotence on the part of all the elites which is the factor that is most fundamental in the present confusion and crisis of confidence within America. The radicals have within their organization individuals who espouse the philosophies of revolution, adventurism, anarchism, socialism, existentialism, humanism, populism, black nationalism, separatism, man darinism, and nihilism.” [Omar Grine, “America against Itself: A Case of Democratic Anarchism?” Daedalus. Volume 101, number 4, fall 1972. Pages 103-117.]

“Rather than being content with shallow, unconsidered, or simply absent of perspectives on art, I think it is extremely important that anarchists develop complex ideas about how art and culture operate in society, influence emotions and ideas, and are part of movements for social change. For over ten years I have been actively producing art and graphics for anarchist projects and pub lications, attempting to develop anti-authoritarian concepts and ethics in my art practice, and put forward radical ideas through art created for and on streets across the United States. Like any other anarchist agitator, I want to debate the effectiveness of my actions, but as a movement we don’t to have the proper tools to assess cultural work. (Generally speaking, I have received little critical response to my artwork from other anarchists.) Developing such conceptual and critical tools is as complicated as it is vital, since culture and art are qualitative, not quantitative. You can count the bodies that came to a protest or the amount of money raised by a fundraiser, but there is no clear scale by which to measure the effectiveness of a cultural product or event.

“So what would a new and more nuanced perspective on ‘Anarchist Art’ look like? If anarchist art isn’t just art made by anar chists, what is it? I’m not proposing that there should be a strict definition, or that we should set as our goal the ability to decide what is, or isn’t, anarchist culture. But we do need to think through the implications of our activities, whether we are producers, users, or just viewers/listeners of art. Anarchists should think about the effectiveness of the culture we produce, and maybe even question why we produce an endless parade of text-heavy newspapers and pamphlets instead of beautiful posters, street art, or videos.”

[Josh MacPhee, “Four Questions for Anarchist Art.” Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. Volume 9, number 1, fall 2005. Pages 36-41.]

“Why is anarchist art so often a parody of itself, predictable and uninteresting? Sure, everyone is capable of doing art, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is an artist. And yet it is generally perceived as wrong in anarchist circles that some people are or want to be artists, and others of us aren’t or don’t want to be. Beyond the issue of who makes works of art, why can’t art made by antiauthoritarians be provocative, thoughtful, innovative — and even composed of materials that can’t be found in a dumpster? More to the point, why do or should anarchists make art at all today, and what would we want art to be in the more egalitarian, nonhierarchical societies we dream of?

“This I know: an anarchist aesthetic should never be boxed in by a cardboard imagination.”

[Cindy Milstein. Reappropriate the Imagination! Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Page 3.]

“Is the upshot of the critique of mystical anarchism that we should be resigned in the face of the world’s violent inequality and update a belief in original sin with a reassuringly miserabilistic Darwinism? Should we reconcile ourselves to the options of political realism, authoritarianism or liberalism? Should we simply renounce the utopian impulse in our personal and political thinking? …

“Let me return for a last time to mystical anarchism and to the question of self-deification. Defending the idea of becoming God might be seen as going a little far, I agree. To embrace such mysticism would be to fall prey to what, in his book on St Paul, [Alain] Badiou calls the obscurantist discourse of glorification.… Badiou draws a line between St Paul’s declaration of the Christ-event, what he calls ‘an ethical dimension of anti-obscurantism,’ and the mystical discourse of identity with the divine, the ravished subjectivity of someone like [Marguerite] Porete.

“Yet, to acquiesce in such a conclusion would be to miss something vital about mystical anarchism: what I want to call, in closing, its politics of love. What I find most compelling in Porete is the idea of love as an act of absolute spiritual daring that eviscerates the old self in order that something new can come into being.”

[Simon Critchley with Robert Sinnerbrink, “Mystical Anarchism.” Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory. Volume 10, number 2, August 2009. Pages 272-306.]

“Love: What never was given, nor is, nor will be, makes her naked and places her in nothingness without her caring about whatever might be, and she desires neither assistance nor to be spared, neither from His power, nor from His wisdom, nor from His goodness. The Soul speaks of her Lover and thus says: He is, says this Soul, and nothing is lacking to Him. I am not, and so nothing is lacking to me. And so He has given me peace and I live only from Peace, which is born from His gifts in my soul without thought. I can do nothing if it is not given to me to do. He is my All and my Best Good. Such being makes me have one love and one will and one work in two natures. Annihilation by the unity of divine righteousness has such power. [Love]: This Soul leaves the dead to bury the dead, and the sad ones to work the Virtues, and so she rests from the least part of her in the greater part, but she uses all things. This greater part shows her her nothingness, naked without covering; such nakedness shows her the All Powerful through the goodness of divine righteousness. These showings make her deep, large, supreme, and sure. For they make her always naked, All and Nothing, as long as they hold her in their embrace.” [Marguerite Porete. The Mirror of Simple Souls. Ellen L. Babinsky, translator. Mahweh, New Jersey: Paulist Press. 1993. Page 130.]

“I will examine selected features of [Peter] Sloterdijk’s theory of spheres that are relevant to anarchism.… My claim is that Sloterdijk’s spherology can be useful for thinking about solidarity in the context of anarchism, and in particular for ecoanarchist movements. Sloterdijk’s work also allows for a theoretical support of the anarchist idea of slow, everyday transformation that is often contrasted with the model of social change achieved through the means of a revolution. As his description of society is based on the concept of mimesis and training—defined as a bodily repetition of available models—Sloterdijk’s ideas can be useful for thinking about anarchist collectivities. These collectivities try to introduce alternative, daily practices into their micro social structures as a way to permanently change the surrounding world. I will show that this is where Sloterdijk’s mimetic concept of training can be used as a valuable conceptual tool towards understanding anarchist collectives. My claim throughout this paper is that contemporary anarchism in practice is an effective form of harnessing mimesis towards a more habitable world. What is more, Sloterdijk’s theory of spheres offers an alternative structure to the usual philosophical model that anarchists use in order to describe anarchist collectives, that is, Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze’s rhizomes ….” [Iwona Janicka, “Are these Bubbles Anarchist? Peter Sloterdijk’s Spherology and the Question of Anarchism.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 24, number 1, spring–summer 2016. Pages 62-84.]

“… [There is the] project of spherology.…

“… The central idea of this spherological project is articulated in the statement that modernity can be understood only as the age of a struggle over the redefinition of the meaning of reality. In contrast, however, to the polemical ontologies that dominated the discourse of the twentieth century, I attempt to show that the main event of this time consisted in Western civilization’s escape from the dogmatism of gravity. The proposition that the passion du réel [passion for the real] was the main concern of the twentieth century may also be regarded as entirely appropriate. But only the supplementary conclusion that the activation of the real now also manifests itself in a passion for antigravitation enables us to understand, on its own terms, the meaning and course of the battles over the real. The drama of the century reveals itself adequately only if we interpret the most visible battles, both physical and discursive, as forms of expression of something generally dying out. I am speaking of the death throes of the belief in gravity, which, since the nineteenth century, has manifested itself in ever-renewed battles, reactions, and fundamentalisms.

“The spherological approach is based on a hermeneutics of antigravitational or unburdened, exonerated existence that has both a destructive and a constructive dimension to it. While, from the constructive perspective, the discovery of atmospheric facts and of the hidden realities of the immune system is discussed, the general theory of antigravitation and exoneration focuses, in its destructive thrust, on the ideological productions which, since the days of the French Revolution, have riveted human beings to the ontological hardships of modernity: the hardships of lack, want, scarcity of resources, violence, and crime. At the heart of all these theories, which for the most part present themselves as anthropologies, economics, and theories of barren nature, statements on reality (alias nature or history) are advanced, which, in the process, limit the field of human freedom to the hesitant gesture of subordination to the law of the real. Wherever the new realisms find their voice, human beings are declared the vassals and vehicles of overpowering forces of reality, whether these are styled in naturalistic, voluntaristic, economistic, vitalistic, drive-theoretical, or genetic idioms.”

[Peter Sloterdijk, “What Happened in the Twentieth Century? En Route to a Critique of Extreme Reason: Inaugural Lecture, Emmanuel Levinas Chair, Strasbourg, March 4, 2005.” Cultural Politics. Volume 3, number 3, November 2007. Pages 327-355.]

“With regard to the traditional intellectual laborers, it becomes immediately apparent that they usually view their activities in a completely different way than they should according to [Karl] Marx’s model. Intellectual laborers usually know next to nothing about their role in the economy of social labor and domination. They remain far removed from the ‘ground of hard facts,’ live with their heads in the clouds, and view the sphere of ‘real production’ from an unreal distance. They exist thus, according to Marx, in a world of global, idealistic mystification. Intellectual ‘labor’ (even the designation is an attack) wants to forget that it is also, in a specific sense, labor. It has got used to not asking about its interplay with material, manual, and executive labor. The entire classical tradition, from Plato to [Immanuel] Kant, thus neglects the social base of theory: slave economy, serfdom, relations of subjugation in labor. Instead, this tradition bases itself on autonomous intellectual experiences that motivate its activity: the striving for truth, virtuous consciousness, divine calling, absolutism of reason, genius.” [Peter Sloterdijk. Critique of Cynical Reason. Michael Eldred, translator. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. 1987. Page 36.]

“Significantly, the awareness of being embedded became suddenly depoliticised after 1945 and disappeared from the lofty collectivist spheres – as though people never wanted to hear again that there are art forms which encase man in man. It is as though the collective memory had preserved the intuitive insight that the prominence of the totalitarian temptation grows in tandem with the extent of immersion in pooling units. Today it is obvious that the people living in the second half of the twentieth century no longer have any regard for empire-building. They seem to live according to the motto: no more grand success stories. They prefer to assemble those elements from home improvement centres which help them build immunity against totalitarian forms of immersion. To them, it seems immediately evident that they must weave the fabric for their happiness in smaller, more private dimensions.” [Peter Sloterdijk, “Architecture As an Art of Immersion.” A.-Chr. Engels-Schwarzpaul, translator. Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts. Volume 12, 2006. Pages 105-109.]

“If we want to show the world in its motion as pregnant with catastrophies, we have to assume that today’s world process has received its dynamics from the initiatives accumulated over the past centuries. Thus, a perception of the present that claims to be at the level of real events presupposes something that has hitherto been successfully rejected by intellectual conscience: a physics of freedom, a kinetics of moral initiatives. Let’s say it openly: This is the end of aestheticism in cultural theory. The seemingly most empty, the most external, the most mechanical—movement (which had been left to the physicists and sports medicine doctors to research)—penetrates the humanities and at once turns out to be the cardinal category, even of the moral and social sphere.” [Peter Sloterdijk, “Mobilization of the Planet from the Spirit of Self-Intensification.” Heidi Ziegler, translator. TDR: The Drama Review. Volume 50, number 4, winter 2006. Pages 36-43.]

“… [Peter] Sloterdijk can be considered a sort of negative alter ego of [Jürgen] Habermas, whose 80ᵗʰ birthday was celebrated in 2009. Sloterdijk not only question Habermas, but also the existence and validity of communicative reason. Therefore he does not believe in the pursuit of truth through dialogue processes, and is not convinced that peaceful verbal reasoning can work as a tool for combating violence and wars.” [Bárbara Freitag Rouanet, “The Trilogy Spheres of Peter Sloterdijk.” Journal of Oriental Studies. Volume 21, 2011. Pages 73-84.]

“[Peter] Sloterdijk’s first substantial work was Critique of Cynical Reason, which appeared in German in 1983 and was translated into English in 1988. A best-seller against the odds, it catapulted Sloterdijk from obscurity to the centre of the German philosophical debate. Its title is an obvious parody of Kant‘s famous critical project, and later appropriations of that mantle such as Sartre‘s Critique of Dialectical Reason. Sloterdijk opposes the all-pervasive modern cynical thought that he diagnoses as a contemporary malaise, to a more originary cynical thought. This is the thought of original cynics like Diogenes in Ancient Greece.” [Stuart Elden and Eduardo Mendieta, “Being-With as Making Worlds: The ‘Second Coming’ of Peter Sloterdijk.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Volume 27, number 1, February 2009. Pages 1-11.]

“… an ominous feature of the celestial environment seems to threaten the ability of outer space commerce to achieve its potential: celestial anarchy. Although, terrestrially, governments enjoy the sovereignty over their territories needed for the state to define and enforce property rights in those territories, celestially, things are quite different. In outer space, much as in international space, no government has sovereignty. This fact is enshrined in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by the spacefaring nations. Article II of the treaty prohibits signatory nations from extending territorial jurisdiction to celestial bodies.…

“The problem celestial anarchy seems to create here is straightforward. Private parties who have property disputes when operating in outer space need to settle their disputes in courts of law. But such courts are within the legal domains of national sovereigns. Enforcing private parties’ property rights in outer space therefore requires a de facto concession of national sovereignty, running afoul of Article II.…

“… Celestial anarchy … appears to pose a serious obstacle to flourishing outer space commerce.…

“… Celestial anarchy is genuine, but the ostensible problem it poses for the development of outer space commerce is not. Private property rights can and do survive without the endorsement or involvement of any sovereign entity. This suggests that private parties can, if given the chance, enforce property rights in outer space. Economically, at least, celestial anarchy poses no obstacle to the flourishing and hill development of celestial enterprise.”

[Alexander W. Salter and Peter T. Leeson, “Celestial Anarchy: A Threat to Outer Space Commerce.” Cato Journal. Volume 34, number 2, fall 2014. Pages 581-596.]

“The proletarianization of reproduction that characterizes the present ‘control society’ would be unstoppably explosive if it were not accompanied by generalized familization. And it is the internet that now leads to a previously unimaginable absolutization of familism. In the advent of the internet, the so-called ‘web 1.0’ resulted in a volcanic confluence of disparate dimensions of existence: everyday life and information technology collided without control, provoking a universalism or communism of ideas freely produced by anyone and accessible to everyone in the world. For each person a universe was opened infinitely beyond familism, the familiarity of the ‘cliques’ of friends and the reification of identity. A potentially revolutionary volcanic disparity, because it made the perspective of a free worldwide association of individuals through their needs, desires, projects and passions more enthralling than the miserable and frightened self-imprisonment of the family. People defined themselves, met and related for what they wanted to be and do: pseudonym and anonymity were the rule. However, with the advent of the so-called ‘web 2.0,’ capital has been careful to destroy this volcanic disparity, forcing everyone to identify themselves, to meet and relate as ‘people with families, friends and registered by the state,’ annihilating at the root the perspective of a universalist internet of individuals freely associated based on their free and common needs and passions.” [Humanaesfera. Against the (New and Old) Familism – Down with the Family! Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Page 4.]

“The great virtue of the proletarians is that they, as an autonomous class, can not attack the structure on the same level of the structure, but as a product, as a resulting molecular production of their own simultaneous everyday activity worldwide. If they attack the structure on the same level of the structure, using a defined strategy, they are condemned to reproduce their own subjection under the same or some new ruling class, because their field of action, the universal simultaneous everyday activity, is doomed to remain unchanged (work, self-sacrifice, subjection …) to carry out the strategy itself, reproducing automatically, perhaps with new names, the same structures which necessarily result from the alienated everyday activity.” [Humanaesfera. Against the strategy: A critique of ideology of the strategy from the perspective of the concept of class composition. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Page 3.]

“A few years ago, I stumbled across THE VOLUNTARYIST [the journal], and Carl Watner’s book, I MUST SPEAK OUT. These writings shed an entirely different light on the lack of government. Instead of chaos, voluntaryism is based on order, peaceful relationships, self-interest, respect for the rights of others, and morality. It teaches that the end does not justify the means. It shares reallife, historical examples of problems that were solved through cooperation and self-interest, not force or theft. I still may not be able to convince anyone else of its merits. But for me, voluntaryism is the answer I have been seeking all these years.” [Kurt Fuller, “Evolution to voluntaryism.” The Voluntaryist. Volume 115, fourth quarter 2002. Pages 3-4.]

“This is the principle of voluntaryism: religious belief is best arrived at voluntanily, without the active assistance of government, and this is equally so for everyone. Church membership and financial contributions would likewise follow the voluntary principle. Following a period of state-by-state disestablishments during the years 1776 to 1833, the American church-state proposition came to subscribe to voluntaryism as desirable for stabilizing republics as well as desirable for liberating organized religion. The new American republic, filled as it was with both religious fervency and religious uralism, was thereby made more commodious both to the faifh of reigious minorities and to that of the previously established majority. No longer was a person’s position on purely religious disputes also a prerequisite for enjoying the fun rights of citizenship. This expanded civil liberty. At the same time, voluntaryism reinvigorated organized religion in the early national period, with explosive growth among Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, the upstart Campbellites, and others. Henceforth, a church grew (or not) based on persuasion and its appeal to the people.” [Carl H. Esbeck, “Governance and the Religion Question: Voluntaryism, Disestablishment, and America’s Church-State Proposition.” Journal of Church and State. Volume 48, 2006. Pages 303-326.]

“There is a large unbridgeable chasm between the idea of consent and political government based on majority rule. For inevitably to contend that government rests on consent is to embark down the slippery slope to secessionism that will ultimately lead one to voluntaryism.” [Carl Watner, “Ropes of sand: Voluntaryism and secessionism.” The Voluntaryist. Volume 102, February 2000. Pages 1-7.]

“What, in fact, do we mean by advocating voluntaryism in roads and highways? First of all, we mean a world in which all land is privately owned, and in which public services, as we know them, no longer exist. Individual land owners or groups of land owners would control ingress and egress to their real estate; transportation corridors would be built and funded privately; consumers would pay for access easements according to mutually arrived at contracts. The critical value of a free market system in roads is that it would provide a ‘feedback mechanism telling owners how their choices satisfy the consuming public’ because no one would be forced to pay for a road or service he didn’t want to use.” [Carl Watner, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions: Voluntaryism and the roads.” The Voluntaryist. Volume 92, June 1998. Pages 1-6.]

“The Irish Catholic experience of voluntaryism produced two effects. On the one hand, it created bonds of intimacy between parish priests and their parishioners. In many places, because forced to live on the voluntary offerings of their poor peasants farming and cattle raising for their support, the Irish Catholic clergy identified with their parishioners’ poverty and persecution. On hand, the practice of voluntaryism occasioned numerous clerical Because the Irish were poor, their voluntary contributions were meagre.” [Patrick Carey, “Voluntaryism: An Irish Catholic Tradition.” Church History. Volume 48, number 1, March 1979. Pages 49-62.]

“THE VOLUNTARYIST [the journal] seeks to reclaim the anti-political heritage of libertarianism. It seeks to reestablish the clear, clean difference between the economic and the political means of changing society. This difference was well perceived by the forerunners of contemporary libertarianism who tore the veil of legitimacy away from government to reveal a criminal institution which claimed a monopoly of force in a given area. Accordingly, early libertarians such as Benjamin Tucker maintained that one could no more attack government by electing politicians than one could prevent crime by becoming a criminal. Although he did not question the sincerity of political anarchists, he described them as enemies of liberty: ‘those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her.’ This rejection of the political process (by which I mean electoral politics) was a moral one based on the insight that no one has the right to a position of power over others and that any man who seeks such an office, however honorable his intentions, is seeking to join a criminal band.” [Wendy McElroy, “Neither Bullets Nor Ballots.” I Must Speak Out: The Best of The Voluntaryist, 1982-1999. Carl Watner, editor. San Francisco, California: Fox & Wilkes. 1999. Pages 55-61.]

“A co-operative is any organisation that is run by its members for its members, essentially instead of shareholders, you have stakeholders.…

“Co-ops are also anti-hierarchical. This means every stakeholder has an equal share in the organisation, so no one has more of a say over how things are run than anyone else. Most co-ops use consensus, or if they’re too big, they sometimes democratically elect a board to run the organisation. Smaller is better though, since it means more direct involvement for the members.…

“Stakeholder ownership promotes local control, empowerment and direct democracy, as opposed to shareholder ownership in which the interests of stakeholders are neglected and the profit motive prevails. An essential principle of co-operative organising is that the organisation is owned and run by its stakeholders.…

“Co-operatives are also a means of organising – they are a process not just an outcome. Co-operation provides strength by bringing people with mutual aims & interests together through the pooling of energy, time & resources to effect change for a common benefit.…

“Non-hierarchical decision-making allows each person involved in the project to have an equal say in the running of the organisation. This may be enacted through consensus decision making in which all members must agree to decisions. While non-hierarchical decision-making can take longer than a hierarchical management system, it makes for more well-rounded decisions which better reflect the interests of members while empowering individuals at the same time. Another form of organisation that is less hierarchical is democratic election of co-ordinators or delegates who are subject to recall.…

“Consensus Decision Making is a system of reaching decisions that is widely regarded as one of the most participative and empowering decision making process. It is a process that can result in surprising and creative solutions.”

[Editor. A Basic Introduction to Co-operatives. Dulwich Hills, New South Wales, Australia: Australian Student Environment Network. 2008. No pagination.]

“Revolutionary Collectivism

“The roots of oppression are in how our society is organized. What society actually does, and what effects those actions have, are only symptoms. Therefore, in order to radically change the way our society functions, we need to objectively change the way it is organized. This means creating alternative organizational forms while tearing down those that predominate now. In the process, we need to subjectively change ourselves, purging characteristics we have internalized from society at large and acquiring new ones from alternative institutions, the collective, then, is the ultimate form of organization for revolutionary social change.

“We need space in which we can self-actualize. Collectives provide this as well as the social power required to change conditions outside the collective. Collectivism is a developing school of revolutionary thought which places the individual in the spotlight and works from that focus to change society from the ground out.

“Once you form or join a well-operating collective, you begin to realize the power of collectivism. Besides facilitating self-empowering and preserving autonomy, the collective becomes a living, functioning example of the ideal alternative to life as it is lived in most of the society around us. The collective renews our hope in ourselves as people, and in people generally.

“Most importantly, by taking control of circumstance, the collective makes the revolution through direct action.”

[Brian Dominic, “What is a Collective?” Build those Collectives: How to Build a Collective and What to Do When It’s Built. Moose and Inza, editors. Brooklyn, New York: BrooklynAGIT. 2011. Pages 10-13.]

“The socionomic character of isocracy can be determined by analysing from a Hegelian perspective the dialectical relation between the ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’ of equality in the creation of normative systems. There are opinions according to which a larger participation (quantitatively) in the expression of normative principles is enough for setting up social equity system; there are also voices according to which participation is relevant only if isocracy is accomplished in conformity with value criteria (qualitatively). A phenomenological perspective reveals that isocracy is the normative system which can surpass the conflict between norms which concern value and socionomic norms (those which refer to the degree of participation). At first sight, participation seems more important for social equity system since it expresses the political will of the majority. Let us suppose that the degree of participation reflects isocracy since it legitimizes power; however, the degree of participation does not determine the degree of utility (or social value) of the normative system.” [Anton Petrisor Parlagi, “Social Equity System.” Challenges of the Knowledge Society. Volume 3, 2013. Pages 1159-1172.]

“Isocracy implies that every citizen must have the same probability to be selected as an archon. Most archons in Ancient Athens were selected by a drawing system from a qualified pool of eligible citizens serving for a short period, usually a year. This process not only assured that all citizens had the same probability to be selected but as many as possible could be selected given the short duration and the large number of positions to be filled.…

“Thus, isocracy means that all have the same right and equal probability to serve in public office.”

[Gregory T. Papanikos, “Democracy in Ancient Athens and in the Contemporary World.” Presented at the 4th Annual International Conference on Humanities & Arts in a Global World. January 3rd–6th, 2017. Pages 1-36. Retrieved on February 11th, 2017.]

“Certain forms of anarchism, especially those associated with primitivism, regard nature as a fundamental source of individual liberty, self-awareness, and self-responsibility. These distinctive varieties of ‘ecological anarchism’ often combine a wild(er)ness ethos with a polemical critique of the social constraints and environmental damage they identify, to varying degrees, with ‘civilisation.’ To anarchists associated with Enlightenment humanist traditions, like Bookchin, such accounts epitomise an irrational and regressive form of nature worship, one supposedly shared with many deep ecologists. This critique is, though, somewhat misplaced and obscures the potential of ecological anarchism and its current failings. Re-wilding understandings of self and nature offer diverse ethico-political possibilities but only if it is recognised that self-identities, idea(l)s of nature, and even conceptions of individual autonomy are partly constituted by the same social histories that primitivism dismisses.…

“… ‘instinct’, direct nonlinguistically mediated personal experiences, and ‘intuition … [are] a crucial part of rewilding’ ….”

[Mick Smith, “Wild-life: Anarchy, Ecology, and Ethics.” Environmental Politics. Volume 16, number 3, June 2007. Pages 470-487.]

“Rewilding is a process that is going on all around us, all the time. It’s going on in our heads, our bodies, our communities, and any forest or river that is recovering from damage. It’s the most irrefutable physical fact that we are capable of observing: the reversion to wild form, uncontrolled by the domesticating grip of (a portion of) one species. The old Earth First! Slogan, ‘Nature Bites Back’, forms the basis of a philosophy of rewilding, in the anti-civilization context. This is not necessarily an exaltation of the coming ecological disasters, but rather, an unmediated reaction to something that seems inevitable, and a stern warning to our decadent culture. Of course, nature already IS biting back, on so many fronts — most dramatically in a way that threatens the most basic needs of our species: food and medicine. The pharmaceutical industry has been profiting off of us for decades, and it only gets more and more lucrative, as we get more and more sick (bodily and mentally) from our poisoned habitats, and our toxic culture. The assaultive approach taken by western science to ‘combat’ disease only provokes the diseased organism to fight back, rendering drugs useless, thus maintaining the need for new drugs. New anti-depressants, new antibiotics, etc…this is a reaction of wildness, regardless of its form as mammal or a virus—trying to re-establish equilibrium. Same goes for industrial agriculture and its militaristic techniques which demand more production and faster yield. It upsets the balance of ecosystems by taking more than giving back, strangling native plant communities, stifling biodiversity, and even more detrimentally: preventing mass amounts of organisms from their ability to re-establish that balance. Not to dwell too long on the miserable factoids we all dread.” [Green Anarchy and the Wildroots Collective, “Rewilding: A Primer for a Balanced Existence Amid the Ruins of Civilization.” Back to Basics. Volume 3, 2004. Page 1.]

“We are often told that our dreams are unrealistic, our demands impossible, that we are basically out of our fuckin’ minds to even propose such a ridiculous concept as the ‘destruction of civilization.’ So, we hope this brief statement may shed some light on why we will settle for nothing less than a completely different reality than what is forced upon us today. We believe that the infinite possibilities of the human experience extend both forwards and backwards. We wish to collapse the discord between these realities. We strive for a ‘futureprimitive’ reality, one which all of our ancestors once knew, and one we may come to know: a pre/post-technological, pre/post-industrial, pre/post-colonial, pre/post-capitalist, pre/post-agricultural, and even pre/post-cultural reality – when we were once, and may again be, WILD!” [Tree Huggin’ Urban Guerrillas. Why Civilization? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Page 3.]

“Wildness, as the term is often used, transcends space and time: unlike wilderness it is not a place and unlike nature it is not external. Wildness is reflective of a continuum. Sure enough, hippies and New Agers may have tried touching on it and self-help gurus might delve into the term, but there’s a degree of inescapability to that. Words travel. As recent attempts to completely own and market rewilding have highlighted, you can’t control the usage, but you can contribute to the context.” [Kevin Tucker. To Speak of Wildness. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Page 7.]

“Because the problem of state power is more crucial now than ever for radical politics, it would be worthwhile returning to one of the most decisive theoretical and political debates over precisely this question. The conflict between Marxism and anarchism over the power, function and relative autonomy of the state, and its role in a social revolution, was a pivotal debate that shaped nineteenth century radical political thought. This paper examines some of the key aspects of this conflict, focussing on the ‘Bonapartist moment’ in classical Marxism — that is, the emergence of the theoretical conditions for the relative autonomy of the state. However, I shall show that, despite this innovation, Marxist theory — Marx, as well as subsequent Marxist interventions — was ‘in the last instance’ constrained by the categories of class and economic relations. My contention here will be that classical anarchism took the theory of Bonapartism to its logical conclusion, and was able to develop a concept of the sovereign state as a specific and autonomous site of power that was irreducible to capitalist economic relations. In doing so, anarchism broke radically with Marxism. Therefore, within the theory of Bonapartism lay the theoretical foundations for an ‘epistemological break’ with Marxism itself, allowing for the development of a new analytics of power — one that, to some extent, contributes towards contemporary ‘poststructuralist’ and ‘post-Marxist’ approaches to this question. In this paper, I will examine the implications of Bonapartism by exploring and developing the classical anarchist critique of Marxism, as well as examining its relevance for contemporary radical political theory.” [Saul Newman. Anarchism, Marxism and the Bonapartist State. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2004. Page 3.]

“The way to prevent such future horrific attacks [as 9/11] is not through arbitrary bombings of other countries or the assignation of individuals who may or may not have been involved. Such actions will only guarantee an escalation of carnage through retaliation and counter-retaliation. Nor will the expansion of the domestic police state prove effective in providing individual security. Israel, for example, is the personification of a quasi-western police state – yet is bombed more frequently than nearly any [other industrialized] nation on Earth. Rather, the way to avoid such future attacks is to eliminate the role of the U.S. and its allies as economic and military imperialists. It is the western nations which consume the vast majority of the World’s resources. It is the capitalist ruling class who reap the great wealth of the Earth through the exploitation of all poor and working people. It is these contradictions, in conjunction with the daily poverty and military oppression of the Middle Eastern people which creates the fertile fields in which these acts of terror are rooted.

“Therefore, North American working class revolutionaries like myself must and will continue to struggle for a materially equitable society based on direct participatory democracy; a society which does not seek the homogenization of the World through imperialism, but rather the blooming of creativity, plenty and liberation through international cooperation and autonomy. It is only through the emergence of such a truly free society that the proliferation of anti-social violence (be it U.S. bombs or religious terror) can be expected to subside.”

[David Van Deusen. One Worker’s Perspective on The September 11ᵗʰ 2001 Attacks: Observations & Warnings. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2001. Page 3.]

“Whatever the future may hold, it is likely that worker-owned companies will continue to play a dynamic and increasing role in Vermont’s economy. What remains to be seen is whether or not this trend is capable of delivering actual workplace democracy or if it will be limited to providing financial rewards and a perception of employee participation. Regardless, in this era of outsourcing and stagnant wages, employee ownership will likely be embraced as a marked improvement to the status quo by many a Vermonter. The print workers are just the start.” [David Van Deusen/Green Mountain Anarchist Collective. Worker Owned: The Changing Face of Employment in Vermont. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2006. Page 5.]

“It is the high residues of hazardous and potentially lethal chemicals inside your fat ceils. It is you sitting inside and turning on the television or computer on a beautiful day. It is you shopping when you are depressed. It is the feeling you get that something is missing. It is your worries that a fire may destroy all of your possessions and your plans to try and take them with you. It is the thought that tells you to go on a diet. It is the excess fat on your body. It is the headache that won’t go away. It is the bleeding in your intestines from years of pain alleviating drug use. It is the birth defects of your children. It is your killer when you die from a car accident. It is your savior when it attempts to fill your void for you. It is your carpal tunnel syndrome. It is your tumor. It is your expensive coffin and burial clothing. It is the drugs you take when you need an escape. It is the bulldozer that destroyed the woods you might have known so well. It is the towering skyscraper that makes you feel forever tiny and powerless. It is your boss. It is minimum wage, it is maximum wage.

“It is your prison, sometimes with bars, sometimes without. It is all your fears. It is what is keeping you up at night. It is the lock on your door. It is the bullet in your gun. It is your noose and your tie. It is that thing that you don’t want to do, but you feel that you have to. It is the turned cheek. It is the cold shoulder. It is the ad that tells you the internet will provide affection for you. It is the new appliance that you never knew existed, but you can’t live without. It is poverty. It is inequality. It is the sink or swim economy. It is the thing that has categorized you. It has stopped you from doing the things you want. It is what makes you jealous. It is your hate. It is your love. It is your purgatives that you feel might be somewhat strange. It is your clenched fist. It is your mace spray.”

[Kevin Tucker. The Disgust of “Daily Life.” Greensburg, Pennsylvania: Black and Green Press imprint of the Coalition Against Civilization. 2001. Public domain. Page 22.]

“… a new community of discourse arose with regard to private and common property, or what one commentator calls ‘the right to exclude and the right to be included.’ This discourse, which could be called the ‘propertarian ideology,’ has dominated many legislative and judicial discussions of rights in commons, and to public uses, and continues to do so. It is defined by three closely related claims: (1) that rights in the commons are not really rights, such that expropriation of common land is not really theft; (2) that use of a commons is inherently wasteful and fractious, such that monopolization becomes a moral imperative; and (3) that rights of exclusion convey only benefits, both utilitarian and economic, such that all of the costs remain on the side of inadequate rather than overgenerous property rights. According to this discourse, both the sacred rights of property and the national wealth come to weigh entirely against the continued exercise by the public of its rights in the commons.

“These tenets constitute a form of ‘ideology’ as Althusser defined the term, or a representation of ‘the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.’ It is a discourse that frequently imagines rights in and uses of commons not so much as they actually were and are, but rather in relation to the maintenance and reproduction of social power.15 It is a propertarian ideology precisely because it does violence to the rich tradition of the commons on every point that renders total enclosure more attractive. And it reigns well nigh unchallenged over contemporary legislative and judicial analyses of the public domain, in a form substantially identical to its articulation in the classical liberal political, legal, and economic theories of John Locke, William Blackstone, and Adam Smith.…

[Hannibal Travis, “Pirates of the Information Infrastructure: Blackstonian Copyright and the First Amendment.” Berkeley Technology Law Journal. Volume 15, number 2, 2015. No pagination.]

“Fresh Kill as described by [Shu Lea] Cheang … as a work of eco-cybernoia. An environment in which the inability to access the media of change causing the uprising of low-fi activism and hacker mentality, or ‘hacktivism’ if you will.” [Jason Logan, “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” InfoNation. November, 1995. Pages 9, 13, and 18.]

“The ambivalence of hackers’ claims to be a countercultural force is mirrored in an inherent contradiction of cyberpunk literature. Cyberpunks are presented as anarchic opponents to established corporate power yet the genre is marked by the frequency with which the cyberpunk’s human agency is subsumed to the greater ends of their corporate hirers. They fail frequently to redirect corporate power to more humane ends and this is perhaps due to the ultimate conflation of the desire of cyberpunks/hackers and of corporations for technological experimentation. Hackers and cyberpunks only wish to surf the wave of technological innovation, but corporations constantly seek to co-opt that desire for their own ends.” [Tim Jordan and Paul A. Taylor. Hacktivism and Cyberwars: Rebels with a cause? London and New York: Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa PLC business. 2004. Page 24.]

“Hacktivists share many, if not all, of the principles of the original hacker ethic. Both hacker and hacktivist ethics are libertarian and anarchist in nature: their ethics puts them ‘on a collision course with the commercial-industrial complex who wish to own and control the Internet’ …. Hacktivists can thus be conceptualized as opponents of the power elite, which, in turn, seeks to use technology to promote its own agendas. It is no surprise, then, that hacktivists have been portrayed by the state and the media as villains and threats to society. Since most hacktivists’ acts are committed against government and corporate powers, hacktivism has quickly become equated with cyber terrorism. However, hacktivists themselves openly condemn cyber terrorism. Some scholars … state that hacktivists are indeed different from cyber terrorists: while cyber terrorists use technology (including the Internet) to commit terrorists acts, hacktivists act more in agreement with civil disobedience than with terrorism.” [Galina Mikhaylova. The “Anonymous” Movement: Hacktivism as an Emerging Form of Political Participation. M.A. thesis. Texas State University. San Marcos, Texas. December, 2014. Pages 4-5.]

“While the values behind hacktivism vary quite markedly – political coders and crackers are often cyber-libertarians, while performative hackers have more in common with traditional leftists or anarchists – their actions and writings are usually framed in ideological or principled terms. A desire and belief in making a difference as an individual explicitly motivates many hacktivists. Hacktivist activities like online parodies, virtual sit-ins, and information theft epitomize the very concept of ‘creative use of information.’ And hacktivists have demonstrated ever-greater precision and sophistication in targeting their campaigns, which may be aimed at domestic or foreign governments, or at corporations.” [Alexandra Whitney Samuel. Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation. Ph.D. dissertation. Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. September, 2004. Pages 151-152.]

“… ever since it [the term ‘hacktivism’] was coined in 1995 by Jason Sack the neologism ‘hacktivism’ (of ‘hacking’ and ‘activism’), has been connected to the field where autonomous anarchist tradition meets activism and digital subversions. It is where squatters, phreakers, scammers, crackers and cultural jammers mix civil disobedience, online activism and hacking to employ the ‘nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends’ ….” [Otto von Busch. Fashion-able: Hacktivism and Engaged Fashion Design. Ph.D. thesis (U.S. English, dissertation). University of Gothenburg. Gothenburg, Sweden. 2008. Page 36.]

“Welcome to 4chan.org [an online image–board]. Christopher Poole founded 4chan in 2003. It is the space where the movement that has become known as ‘Anonymous’ originated …. It works as a series of forums, each oriented on a specific topic (or allowing all topics, such as the forum ‘b’). Users can post text, images, links, content and answers to other threads. The postings are anonymous and therefore the word ‘Anonymous’ is displayed as the username in all threads and posts. As the examples show, 4chan is at the same time anarchistic, mean, rude, absurd, pornographic, political, creative, playful, sarcastic, a display of black humour, etc. Anonymous makes use of the wisdom and creativity of the crowd in its campaigns. This organized wisdom can hit randomly selected everyday people alongside powerful organizations and individuals. 4chan features ‘depraved images and nasty jokes,’ yet is ‘at the same time a source of extraordinary, unhindered creativity’ ….” [Christian Fuchs, “Anonymous: Hacktivism and Contemporary Politics.” Social Media, Politics and the State. Daniel Trottier and Christian Fuchs, editors. London and New York: Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa PLC business. 2014. Pages 88-106.]

“Hacktivism has two currents that intertwine and separate. They also contradict each other. The current that places a premium on free flows of information sometimes sees little sense in the current that generates mass forms of online protest. This can be seen clearly in arguments around denial-of-service attacks. As already noted, denial of service is the restraint of information, the jamming and prevention of someone contributing to or receiving information, by preventing their website or Internet connections from working.” [Tim Jordan. Activism!: Direct Action, Hactivism and the Future of Society. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. 2002. Pages 133-134.]

“To sort out the different effects of networking art and hacking in the business of social media, I examined their development and influence on a cross-national scale, creating a constellation of examples combining different attitudes and models of disruption between USA and Europe. In California, a libertarian attitude towards technology does not necessarily clash with business strategies, while the approach of European network culture is usually related to media criticism and political antagonism. However, such a dichotomy is a theoretical simplification. The presence of radical anarchic and libertarian traditions in the American counterculture deeply influenced some of the European underground media and off-media experimental subcultures. The critique of the idea of hegemony has proven a common ground for these practices, and this hypothesis also explains why counterculture and liberal economy in the US have often been intertwined. However, the fact that many Californian hackers and activists refute ?the political? does not necessarily imply a lack of political awareness and criticism towards the establishment.” [Tatiana Bazzichelli. Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and Business. Raleigh, North Carolina: Lulu Publishing. 2015. Page 14.]

“The Critical Art Ensemble expected that the ‘strategies and tactics for unifying divisions among cultural practices [would] not come from the university or cultural industry centers; rather, they [would] emerge from the minor sectors and nomadic vectors that place themselves in the anarchistic and liminal zones of digital culture.’” [Shannon Hurst. Examining Hacktivism as Performance Through the Electronic Disturbance Theater and Anonymous. M.A. thesis. Florida State University. Tallahassee, Florida. 2013. Page 32.]

“The corporate and regulative normalization of the Internet, contributing to the transformation of a ‘relatively intimate and mildly anarchistic environment to one governed by institutionally-imposed order’ is a ‘sea-change’ that has ‘stranded’ hackers ….” [Tessa Jade Houghton. Hacktivism and Habermas: Online Protest as Neo-Habermasian Counterpublicity. Ph.D. thesis (U.S. English, dissertation). University of Canterbury. Christchurch, New Zealand. 2010. Page 79.]

“The threat posed by hackers has not eluded lawmakers. Indeed, most advanced nations have enacted laws that prohibit hacking. To coordinate international anti-hacking efforts, the 2001 Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime (Convention) established a framework for domestic legal regimes. The prescribed regimes are general in scope, and could conceivably be applied to forms of hacktivism that resemble traditional forms of protest. The legal systems in the United States and the United Kingdom both feature long established principles and doctrine protective of the freedom of expression. In the context of hacktivism as a form of protest, these doctrines could be used to shield a narrow subset of hacktivism from the general prohibition on hacking.” [Noah C. N. Hampson, “Hacktivism: A New Breed of Protest in a Networked World.” Boston College International and Comparative Law Review. Volume 35, issue 2, article 6, May 2012. Pages 511-542.]

“Hacktivism differs from traditional protests in the remaining who and how categories, specifically who participates and how it is conducted. First, cyberattacks can dupe the computers of others into involuntary participation in the attack. Thus, the voluntariness of participation in a cyberattack can vary. In addition, hacktivism generally requires a certain level of technical know-how, but hacktivists have developed ways to enable layperson participation. Furthermore, when compared with traditional protests, cyberattacks are less costly to execute in terms of actual resources as well as physical effort and public presence. This cuts in two separate ways: (1) technology lowers the barriers to participation, and (2) fewer active participants are required to execute an effective cyberattack (as compared with a traditional protest). Second, while traditional protests are accomplished through picketing, marches, or public sit-ins, hacktivism is accomplished through a variety of digital tools, often from behind a computer screen. Although traditional protests may be disruptive to the target’s business by making it inconvenient or difficult for patrons or visitors to access the target’s physical property, successful cyberattacks can often be more disruptive because they can more readily prevent digital access, even if just for a finite period of time.” [Xiang Li, “Hacktivism and the First Amendment: Drawing the Line Between Cyber Protests and Crime.” Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Volume 27, number 1, fall 2013. Pages 301-330.]

“The boundary between hacktivists and cyber-terrorists is blurred, as they both share the intention of bringing about disruption by using more or less the same tools and techniques. Both these groups use the Internet to advocate their causes (propaganda), and to find supporters, both to aid them financially (fundraising) and to participate in their activities (recruitment).

“The level of collaboration and information sharing is rather high between hacktivists. The same is probably not true for cyber-terrorists. Hacktivist targets are usually well defined ? for example certain international organisations (World Trade Organisation, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and G8) have been targets of the anti-globalisation movement. Other groups of hacktivists protest against damage to the environment, genetically modified food, the mistreatment of animals and other causes.”

[Stefano Baldi, Eduardo Gelbstein, and Jovan Kurbalija. Hacktivism, Cyber-Terrorism and Cyberwar: The Activities of the Uncivil Society in Cyberspace. Msida, Malta: DiploFoundation. 2003. Pages 18-19.]

“Within the ‘hacker ethic,’ then, hacktivists share a more fine-tuned set of beliefs: ‘tolerance for legal risk, naming practices, scale of collective action and propensity for multinational cooperation.’ These beliefs contain two subtle yet important changes from hacking in general. First, hacktivists engage more frequently in illegal, rather than legal, computer activity. Second, hacktivists more frequently form a collective – an unsurprising result since hacktivists target singular issues rather than merely fragmented pockets of data or code. Yet, despite hacktivists’ sense of collectivity behind any particular motive for a hack, individual hacktivist operations are primarily ‘conducted by solo or small-group hackers, with little or no apparent coordination of the overall campaign.’” [Brian B. Kelly, “Investing in a Centralized Cybersecurity Infrastructure: Why ‘Hacktivism’ Can and Should Influence Cybersecurity Reform.” Boston University Law Review. Volume 92, 2012. Pages 1663-1711.]

“Of the analysed videos [related to the Anonymous movement], 55% expressed pure liberal viewpoints, 8% pure socialist views, 22% blended liberalism and socialism. Cyberlibertarian positions are dominant …. Anonymous shares classical right-wing cyberlibertarianism’s distrust of governments and its criticism of media and Internet censorship by states, but not its advocacy of intellectual property rights. Anonymous’ libertarian faction favours free access to knowledge and culture, does not advance a profound criticism of commodification and inequality, and sees intellectual property not as an ownership conflict related to the capitalist economy, but as a pure governance issue. Anonymous’ weak form of cyberlibertarianism opens up actual and potential connections to socialist views, struggles, and demands. Anonymous’ worldviews are shaped by the partly conflicting, partly co-existing, and partly complementary existence of cyberlibertarianism, social cyberlibertarianism, and Internet socialism.” [Christian Fuchs, “The Anonymous movement in the context of liberalism and socialism.” Interface: a journal for and about social movements. Volume 5, number 2, November 2013. Pages 345-376.]

“Originating in computer hacking, the term hacktivism is, on one level, a contraction of the terms ‘hacking’ and ‘activism’ and understood as ‘the online strategies and tactics of activists that more or less follow the autonomous anarchist tradition – squatters, phreaks, scammers, crackers, and cultural jammers engaged in anti-globalisation, direct action, and resistance’ …

“Abstract hacktivism, then, can be understood as a theory rooted in praxis; a prefigurative framework for twenty-first century anarchist organizing which offers a rich potential for experimentation and the creation of socio-technological solutions out of the immanent, irreducible social space of postanarchism.”

[Simon Collister, “Abstract hacktivism as a model for postanarchist organizing.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, November 2014. Pages 765-779.]

“… since Jason Sack coined the term [hacktivism] in 1995, it been associated with the online strategies and tactics of activists that more or less follow the autonomous anarchist tradition – squatters, phreaks, scammers, crackers, and cultural jammers engaged in anti-globalisation, direct action, and resistance. This publication, however, will make a radical break with this use of the term – the ‘abstract hacktivism’ that this text will discuss is neither about jamming and resistance, nor about online activity.

“In line with Eric Raymond’s distinction between hackers (who ‘build things’) and crackers (who ‘destroy things’) , the hacktivism discussed in this publication is concerned with construction rather than deconstruction or destruction. Indeed, from such a Raymond-inspired perspective, ‘cracktivism’ is a more suitable term for the activities traditionally associated with hacktivism.

“Choosing this ‘new’ meaning of hacktivism over the ‘traditional’ one – focusing on hacker, rather than cracker, practices – is not a matter of moral judgement. Instead, the choice is purely pragmatic, based on two factors. First, the new meaning of hacktivism is more suitable to describe the concrete actions of actual practicioners ‘out there’ in society. Many of today’s most interesting activists, artists and designers are currently engaging constructive activities that fit well with the original – some would say idealistic and naïve – ethic of the early hackers.

“Secondly, the new meaning of hacktivism is better in line with new strains of thought in contemporary critique.… The intellectual legacy of the ‘baby boomer generation’ – language- and narrative-obsessed social theory, the focus on deconstruction and debunking, the ‘science wars’ – is unravelling.”

[Otto von Busch and Karl Palmås. Abstract Hacktivism: The Making of a Hacker Culture. Milton Keynes, England: Lightning Source UK Ltd. 2006. Page 16.]

“I put in an RFID [Radio-Frequency IDentification] chip in my arm about 5 years ago and remember how strongly criticized I was from the mainstream as well as the body mod community. Now the first chip has been infected with a virus to contaminate computer systems, this experiment was conducted by British scientist Dr. Mark Gasson who has directed Professor Kevin Warwick’s research team. At the time my chip only had a very simple application, to open a door but I did this to demonstrate the close relation between body modification and science and what the two can achieve together – but more importantly my goal was to educate people on how easy it is to combine these and not necessarily to our advantage. This is where body hacking takes on a whole other meaning.” [Lukas Zpira, “Interview: Lukas Zpira.” The Dose: Music, Lifestyle, Technology, Cyberpunk. 2006-2010. Pages 31-33.]

“Created at the dawn of the twenty first century by Lukas Zpira under the impulse of Ryoichi Maeda, the term body hacktivism was born from the necessity to define a movement of artists, reaserchers and thinkers working around mutations and using body modifications as a medium.” [Lukas Zpira, “Bødy Hacktivism: Manifestø.” Undated. Web. Retrieved on January 29th, 2017.]

“The Body Hacktivism movement was created in 2000 by a French body modification artist and photographer named Lukas Zpira. Its enthusiasts—defined as body hacktivists or body hackers—aim to work empirically and conceptually around the possibility of a body modified by technology. Lukas Zpira introduced Body Hacktivism as a philosophy that encompasses independent artists, researchers and thinkers working around technological, futurist, prospective and functional bodily mutations. The founder introduces the source of inspiration coming from comics such as manga, science-fiction movies and similar literature.…

“Anarchism is the word he [T. Angel] uses to define Body Hacktivism, not forgetting to connect the technological aspect to it. He says Body Hacktivism is the possibility to question society and its values through your own body, deciding to mark it temporarily or definitely. Anarchism is certainly an extension of Body Hacktivism’s version. He says that technologies are available to maximize people’s potential.”

[Bárbara Nascimento Duarte, “The Body Hacktivism Movement: A Talk About the Body.” PsychNology Journal: The Other Side of Technology. Volume 11, number 1, 2013. Pages 21-42.]

“Today the term ‘transhumanism’ refers to ‘the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities’ …. Transhumanism then denotes the transition from human to posthuman existence, as well as activities and attitudes that one is expected to promote in order to bring about the ideal, posthuman future. Because transhumanism sees itself as a process that will culminate in posthuman existence, the two terms are often used interchangeably, further adding to the terminological confusion. Furthermore, within the transhumanist discourse there are at least two distinct strands. One focuses on human enhancement in the present, whereas the other focuses on cyber-immortality in the future. The former is straightforwardly secular, indeed a continuation of nineteenth-century humanistic naturalism and utilitarianism, while the latter is saturated with religious themes: its mentality is apocalyptic and its orientation is eschatological.” [Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Transhumanism as a Secularist Faith.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. Volume 47, number 4, December 2012. Pages 710-734.]

“Anarcho-Transhumanism is the recognition that social liberty is inherently bound up with material liberty, and that freedom is ultimately a matter of expanding our capacity and opportunities to engage with the world around us. It is the realization that our resistance against those social forces that would subjugate and limit us is but part of a spectrum of efforts to expand human agency—to facilitate our inquiry and creativity.

“This means not just being free from the arbitrary limitations our bodies might impose, but free to shape the world around us and deepen the potential of our connections to one another through it.

“It means the tools we use should be openly knowable and infinitely customizable; it means bodies that are not locked into processes in which we have no say. It knows that the hunger for choice behind birth control, regrown limbs and sexual reassignment is the same hunger that organizes workers and sets fire to prisons. It is struggle to live free … and do so for one more year, one more decade, one more century. It means not just transcending the strictures of gender, but of genetics and all previous human experience. It means fighting to be allowed the fullest actualization of who and what we want to be, whenever we want to be it.

“It means challenging and altering the conditions that might otherwise govern us. It means when the tools exist to better our lives they should be used; that no one should starve when such scarcity can be eliminated. It means vigilantly engaging with nature rather than bullying or surrendering to it. It is the knowledge that victory for the working class will only truly arrive when every worker individually owns the means of production—capable of fabricating anything and everything for themselves. It is proactive engagement with the environmental conditions that force hierarchy and inescapable collectivism. It means freeing our society from the hierarchies of two dimensional landscapes, to move our destructive infrastructures outside the biosphere and to eventually shake off sedentary civilization and take our place as hunter-gatherers between the stars.

“It means cryptography—unbreakable channels of private communication added up into an unbreakable hive of ideas and knowledge. It also means the abolition of public privacy—the creation of a world where the actions we take with one another are shareable and verifiable in an instant. And ultimately it will be the freedom to surpass the limited bandwidth of language and connect more and more directly to one another—to merge minds and transcend individual subjectivities as desired.

“Anarcho-Transhumanism is all of these things and any one of them.”

[William Gillis. What is Anarcho-Transhumanism? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 1.]

“Morphological freedom is the essential link between anarchism and transhumanism that turns transhumanism from a weapon of domination to a weapon of decentralized liberation and resistance to the limits imposed on us by dominance, or even by our own bodies and minds. Sandberg expands on this by pointing to basic examples such as antibiotics or sex-reassignment surgery that facilitate the actualization of our fullness as beings. Sanders then goes into a domain more specifically relevant to the content of this essay by stating that, ‘Our freedom of thought implies a freedom of brain activity. If changes of brain structure (as they become available) are prevented, they prevent us from achieving mental states we might otherwise have been able to achieve. There is no dividing line between the body and out mentality, both are part of ourselves. Morphological freedom is the right to modify oneself.’ This quote shows how our right to happiness and modifying our genetics is linked to our right to being neuro-diverse, or even to pursuing greater degrees of divergence in service of our own preferences or happiness. Assimilative technologies do fall under this morphological freedom in that they are often a radical act of survival even if the purity of agency is complexified by socio-political pressures. This means that although divergence may hold an evolutionary appeal, our radical body autonomy also must honor the choices of those seeking to assimilate in order to better increase their mobility in other realms and according to various forces of domination.” [Emmi Bevensee. Genetic Engineering Against Neuro-Normativity! Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Page 4.]

“From the right to freedom and the right to one’s own body follows that one has a right to modify one’s body. If my pursuit of happiness requires a bodily change – be it dying my hair or changing my sex – then my right to freedom requires a right to morphological freedom. My physical welfare may require me to affect my body using antibiotics or surgery. On a deeper level, our thinking is not separate from our bodies. Our freedom of thought implies a freedom of brain activity. If changes of brain structure (as they become available) are prevented, they prevent us from achieving mental states we might otherwise have been able to achieve. There is no dividing line between the body and out mentality, both are part of ourselves. Morphological freedom is the right to modify oneself.” [Anders Sandberg, “Morphological Freedom – Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It.” The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future. Max More and Natasha Vita-More, editors. Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell imprint of John Wiley & Sons. 2013. Pages 89-99.]

“Sandberg develops the concept of ‘morphological freedom’ to express one transhumanist attitude to morphology or body configuration: ‘The desirability to [of] many of the possibilities allowed by morphological freedom also helps support the right to not change, as people see that they are two sides of the same coin’ ….” [Heather G. Bradshaw and Ruud Ter Meulen, “A Transhumanist Fault Line Around Disability: Morphological Freedom and the Obligation to Enhance.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. Volume 35, number 6, December 2010. Pages 670-684.]

“… to take an extreme transhumanist prospect, the resource requirements of a million living humans are much less than those of a million computers simulating a million humans – say, those who have had their brain contents uploaded before suffering a biological death. Brains are simply much more energy efficient than computers if taken on a one-to-one basis. But of course, a single computer operating with a sufficiently sophisticated programme could simulate many dead humans at a diminishing marginal cost, given the massive similarity in the structure, function and inputs of human brains. As a result, some large number – say, a thousand – humans simulated in one computer may end up being cost-competitive with one living human. These thousand simulated humans would be effectively sharing the same body. Indeed, over time problems of individuation may arise as the simulated humans interact with each other and thereby acquire their own versions of each other’s memories, perhaps resulting in an emergent hive intelligence, something akin to the ‘Borg’ in Star Trek. In short, a just and efficient society founded on the principle of morphological freedom may have as an unintended consequence a rather variable commitment to the very idea of individuation, the ontological ground of libertarianism. In that case, some people may simply opt for a shared identity of some sort.” [Steve Fuller, “Morphological Freedom and the Question of Responsibility and Representation in Transhumanism.” Confero. Volume 4, issue 2, article 3, 2016. Pages 33-45.]

“It would unfortunately not be entirely absurd to claim climate change to be the greatest social problem of the twenty-first century. Short of the historical development and proliferation of nuclear weapons, nothing else seems to pose such a dire threat to human welfare as do the projected consequences of climate change. A recent report released by The Lancet, for example, claims it to constitute the greatest threat to human health in this century. The dialectics of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the global climate and the greenhouse effect— which itself dialectically has allowed for the emergence and evolution of life on Earth for nearly four billion years—represents a problematic that, in Dussel’s view, joins the mass persistence of global material poverty in constituting the final limit to the age of modernity, the capitalist mode of production, and political liberalism.” [Javier Sethness, “Atmospheric Dialectics: A Critical Theory of Climate Change.” Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. Volume 12, number 2, fall 2010. Pages 8-25.]

“Scholars have recently been less interested in this small-group, isolationist tendency than in sociopolitical behaviors reflecting a more forward stance and appetite for expansion, power, and control. Inequality and sociopolitical complexity are the hallmarks of interest here, tendencies I believe to be overdrawn for much of California. In this volume I explore their antithesis, a sociopolitical downsizing and evolution of what I have come to call orderly anarchy, and the emergence of the extreme anarchies in Northwest California, where ‘social organization was marked by an almost unprecedented lack of organization and by extreme individualism and mutual distrust’ ….

“…While anarchy sometimes leads to chaos, the point of this volume is that it need not, and in aboriginal California did not, evolving instead as an orderly anarchy, defined here as a persistent state of order and productive social interaction in the absence of formal authority or means of enforcement. While use of the term in connection with aboriginal California and the Great Basin was suggested to me by my colleague Peter Richerson, it is not new to anthropology, going back to [Sir Edward Evan] Evans-Pritchard’s work on the pastoral Nuer of the Sudan.”

[Robert L. Bettinger. Orderly Anarchy: Sociopolitical Evolution in Aboriginal California. Oakland, California: University of California Press. 2015. Kindle edition.]

“In this provocative reinterpretation of California Indian prehistory, Robert Bettinger argues that California Indian societies north of the Colorado River defy standard theories of sociopolitical evolution. Or rather, Bettinger uses California Indian sociopolitical evolution to challenge the assumption that hunter-gatherer societies represent an evolutionary relic on the path to agriculture and greater political centralization. He argues that ‘hunter-gatherer systems continued to evolve’ after the invention of agriculture ‘in ways that put them on equal footing with agriculturalists, and sometimes at a definite advantage.’ He asserts that California Indian societies’ persistence as hunter-gatherers was not a product of California’s geographic or cultural isolation, but was instead a successful economic adaptation that spread from the Owens Valley west into the rest of California and east into the Great Basin. In California, Bettinger defines this advantageous evolutionary trend as having produced a political system he calls ‘orderly anarchy,’ defined ‘as a persistent state of order and productive social interaction in the absence of formal authority or means of enforcement’” [Ashley Sousa, “Orderly Anarchy: Sociopolitical Evolution in Aboriginal California.” Review article. Canadian Journal of History. Volume 51, number 2, autumn 2016. Pages 381-383.]

“The mechanism of generating advantageous coordination equilibria that are self-enforcing thanks to their incentive structure or to retaliation that deters free-riders, calls forth not only the great Humean trinity of ownership, transfer and promise, but a much larger set of greater or smaller conventions that can generate mutual advantage. The set protects against torts, discourages nuisances and scolds incivilities. Such a set of conventions is the foundational institution of ordered anarchy. In a closed society, this set of convention suffices to keep the peace and to uphold the social order, and makes the Hobbesian government redundant, just as the creation of such government by social contract makes the set of conventions redundant. Humeans would have no hesitation in deciding which of the two is redundant.…

“… [David] Hume was perfectly aware of the small group-large group problem. He nevertheless judged that a society ruled only by its conventions could function as an ordered anarchy if left alone. He declared unambiguously that ‘…I assert the first rudiments of government to arise from quarrels, not among men of the same society, but among those of different societies.’”

[Anthony de Jasay, “Ordered Anarchy and Contractarianism.” Philosophy. Volume 85, number 3, July 2010. Pages 399-403.]

“I hope even now to live to see the day when the first dawn of the new era of labor will have arisen, when capitalism will be a thing of the past, and the new industrial republic, the commonwealth of labor, shall be in operation.” [Lucy E. Parsons. Speech to the IWW in 1905. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1905. Page 1.]

“A word to the 35,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part, not sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to appease the pangs of hunger now knawing at your vitals. It is with you and the hundreds of thousands of others similarly situated in this great land of plenty, that I wish to have a word.“Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for your labor to be of use in the production of wealth? Have you not toiled long, hard and laboriously in producing wealth? And in all those years of drudgery do you not know you have produced thousand upon thousands of dollars? worth of wealth, which you did not then, do not now, and unless you ACT, never will, own any part in? Do you not know that when you were harnessed to a machine and that machine harnessed to steam, and thus you toiled your 10, 12 and 16 hours in the 24, that during this time in all these years you received only enough of your labor product to furnish yourself the bare, coarse necessaries of life, and that when you wished to purchase anything for yourself and family it always had to be of the cheapest quality? If you wanted to go anywhere you had to wait until Sunday, so little did you receive for your unremitting toil that you dare not stop for a moment, as it were? And do you not know that with all your squeezing, pinching and economizing you never were enabled to keep but a few days ahead of the wolves of want? And that at last when the caprice of your employer saw fit to create an artificial famine by limiting production, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron horse to which you had been harnessed was stilled; the factory door locked up, you turned upon the highway a tramp, with hunger in your stomach and rags upon your back?”

[Lucy E. Parsons. To Tramps, The Unemployed, the Disinherited, and Miserable. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1884. Page 3.]

“Our comrades were not murdered by the state because they had any connection with the bombthrowing, but because they were active in organizing the wage-slaves. The capitalist class didn’t want to find the bombthrower; this class foolishly believed that by putting to death the active spirits of the labor movement of the time, it could frighten the working class back to slavery.” [Lucy E. Parsons. The Voice of the People will yet be Heard. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1912. Page 4.]

“The philosophy of anarchism is included in the word ‘Liberty,’ yet it is comprehensive enough to include all things else that are conducive to progress. No barriers whatever to human progression, to thought, or investigation are placed by anarchism; nothing is considered so true or so certain, that future discoveries may not prove it false; therefore, it has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, ‘Freedom’: Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully. Other schools of thought are composed of crystallized ideas — principles that are caught and impaled between the planks of long platforms, and considered too sacred to be disturbed by a close investigation. In all other “issues” there is always a limit; some imaginary boundary line beyond which the searching mind dare not penetrate, lest some pet idea melt into a myth. But anarchism is the usher of science — the master of ceremonies to all forms of truth. It would remove all barriers between the human being and natural development. From the natural resources of the earth, all artificial restrictions, that the body might be nurtures, and from universal truth, all bars of prejudice and superstition, that the mind may develop symmetrically.” [Lucy E. Parsons. The Principles of Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1905. Page 2.]

“Owing to a poverty of vision anarchists are failing to bridge the gap between utopian economic models of society and reality – theory and praxis. The result is a de facto acceptance of the basest systems as ‘pragmatic.’ Direct economic democracy, also known as libertarian socialism, is attainable but only in ways that connect to the experiences of daily life. By modifying existing institutions of production it is pragmatically possible to achieve societies resembling distant utopias. One of my proposals is that the top corporations have half their boards of directors filled by lottery from the demos modelled on the jury system, the other half by workers of the company. Here, citizens and workers would set corporate policy which affects society at large. My second proposal is to establish a standard national wage, leading to increased economic efficiency and development. These changes are possible only through critical pedagogy and radical direct action but the possibilities have been demonstrated by US labour and civil rights history.…

“… Some left groups … think epochal transformation happens like the big bang: instantaneously through a ‘great strike’ or ‘revolutionary moment’! Did feudalism appear in this way from antiquity? Did capitalism appear in its fully developed form in a fortnight? No. Any historian will tell you all this is a result of historical processes, often historically contingent. There is room for a different way of thinking about transformation. The changes we should be considering are the intelligent moves that will unfold historically in the direction of social equality, in this case direct economic democracy.”

[John Asimakopoulos, “Bridging Utopia and Pragmatism to Achieve Direct Economic Democracy.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 21, number 2, 2013. Pages 48-73.]

“A basic political definition of direct democracy is that cltlzens represent themselves by voting directly on all issue s confronting the community, including leglslatlon, and passing legal judgment in courts as citizen jurors. This is in stark contrast to all forms of representative democracy where we vote for the Congressperson or senator who will vote in our best interest without having to consult each of us first. Interestingly, due to U.S. government and business propaganda, a direct democracy is today popularly referred to as Communism or anarchism.…

“Another characteristic of direct democracy is that it is an economic as much as a political system. For this reason, most classical theorists, including [Karl] Marx and [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon, develop models of political economy. Sadly, on the Left, contemporary utopians reject most established political economy as belonging exclusively to capitalism. For example, in an online discussion titled ‘Anarchist Economics’ one poster commented, ‘Anarchist economics?! Now, that’s an oxymoron!’ After further discussion, it became cleasr that the contributor, a longtime anarchist, assumed that ‘economics’ is capitalism. While that may be true for the typical university economics course, there is a long history of economic analyses, models, and practices that are based on anti-capitalist principles.”

[John Asimakopoulos. Social Structures of Direct Democracy: On the Political Economy of Equality. Leiden, the Netherlands, and Boston, Massachusetts: Brill. 2014. Page 6.]

“A key goal of libertarian socialists is the elimination of all forms of government in favor of self-organization, based on the argument that any government by definition results in the suppression of the many by the few. This is held to be true of democracies, as well, in that they are also dominated by elites and therefore will not benefit the working class. Democracies are acknowledged to provide some benefits as a result of working-class participation, but these are seen as minor and perpetually under attack by elite interests.…

“Ideology and political institutions shape class conflict and thus the relations in production and distribution.…

“This institutional approach to capitalist expansion underscores the classic Marxist critique of overproduction and overconsumption, and capitalism’s inherent contradictions.”

[John Asimakopoulos. Revolt!: The Next Transformation from Kleptocracy Capitalism to Libertarian Socialism through Counter Ideology, Societal Evolution, & Direct Action. Fair Lawn, New Jersey: Transformative Studies Institute Press. 2011. Pages 14-15.]

“For the purposes of this paper, working class and labor will be used interchangeably and will refer to any person or household that does not own sufficient means of production as to have a relatively high living standard without dependency on paid work. As known, the anarchist principle of self-organization refers to a form of direct democracy (people representing themselves), while self-direction refers to worker owned and operated collective production ….

“In addition, anarchism seeks the elimination of all forms of government in favor of self-organization, arguing that any government by definition results in the suppression of the many by the few. This is held to be true of democracies as well in that they are also dominated by elites and therefore will not benefit the working class …. Democracies are acknowledged to provide some benefits as a result of working-class participation but these are seen as minor and perpetually under attack by elite interests ….”

[John Asimakopoulos, “Societal Education, Direct Action, and Working-Class Gains: An Anarchist Perspective.” Journal of Poverty. Volume 11, number 2, June 2007. Pages 1-22.]

“For this article, the working class includes any person or household that does not own adequate means of production as to have a relatively high living standard without dependency on paid work. Outsourcing will refer to the transfer of production from developed to developing regions and the strategic decision to make new investments in the latter. It is also assumed that corporations reflect the interests of the upper class which owns them, thus the two will be used interchangeably. The upper class controls the state which protects and promotes their interests. Market clearing occurs when purchasing power allows aggregate demand to equal output (there are no market shortages or surpluses). Neoliberalism and globalization refer to free trade/capital flows; outsourcing; anti-labor policies; privatization and deregulation; upper-class tax cuts; and cuts in social spending. As known, the principle of self-organization refers to a form of direct democracy (people representing themselves), while self-direction refers to worker owned and operated collective production.” [John Asimakopoulos, “Globally Segmented Labor Markets: The Coming of the Greatest Boom and Bust, Without the Boom.” Critical Sociology. Volume 35, number 2, March 2009. Pages 175-198.]

“Because I have lived on two continents with quite diverse social systems, I came to wonder where would a working class person be better off? Is, for example, Europe truly a worker’s paradise and the United States hell? Regardless of which region offers a better life to workers, the point is that if differences do in fact exist, then we can learn something from them. Thus, we should seek out whether factors exist that have contributed to favorable or unfavorable working class conditions. It also becomes clear that this can indicate an answer to the original question regarding whether or not workers can engage in actions to improve their living standards in an inherently unequal capitalist system. My solution, therefore, is to approach the problem of class inequality and conflict over the distribution of material wealth through a comparative approach. Thus, I decided to focus on two geographic regions: the United States and Europe (United Kingdom, France, and Germany) because they seem to be approximately equivalent regarding variables such as economic development, political democracy and private unionization rates.” [John Asimakopoulos. Comparative Analysis of European and American Working Class Attainments: Equality, Living Standards, and Social Structures of Accumulation. Ph.D. dissertation. City University of New York. New York, New York. 2000. Page 2.]

“[John] Asimakopoulos is convinced – on the basis of contemporary tendencies or trends, such as outgrown political structure, ostentatious financial misdeeds, extremities of poverty and riches and the unwillingness or inability of elites to pay ‘the ecological bill’ for the Industrial Revolution – that we can begin to provide fairly detailed answers to questions about the sources of political, economic and cultural power needed to begin a purposeful transition from capitalist to directly democratic modes of living. He defines direct democracy in terms of: citizens’ self-representations and direct voting ‘on all issues confronting the community, including legislation’; as well as the exercise of legal judgement in courts as ‘citizen jurors.’ The exercise of citizenship in this sense extends to every area of life, including the workplace.” [Kathryn Dean, “Social Structures of Direct Democracy: On the Political Economy of Equality.” Review article. Journal of Critical Realism. Volume 16, issue 2, February 2017. Pages 230-234.]

“I highly recommend this book to anyone who works for a living, and even mature teenagers about to enter the workforce, as they are our future and are exposed to more and more capitalist propaganda as they go through high school which, depending on various factors, including adult guidance, could either teach them to learn and think critically or prepare them to be cogs in a defective capitalist system. In Revolt!, [John] Asimakopoulos early defines ‘working class’ essentially to mean anyone who must work in order to live, which would encompass a major percentage of people from all lines of work. And to be sure, he cites some of Karl Marx’s concepts, such as capitalism being the problem and that band-aiding the problem with bailouts is merely part of its vicious cycle and not a solution to social injustices and inequalities on a national and global scale.” [Charles D. Cavanaugh, “Revolt!: The Next Transformation from Kleptocracy Capitalism to Libertarian Socialism through Counter Ideology, Societal Evolution, & Direct Action.” Review article. Theory in Action. Volume 5, number 1, January 2012. Pages 119-122.]

“… [One can] lay the Gramscian foundation for a true anarcho-communist epoch via a combination of direct action and democracy to achieve the ending of corporate rule over the media, politics, and production. Also, worker and community governance of corporations could evolve into a ground-breaking real-life experimental school for the practice of self-direction and organization …. This would demonstrate to workers that they themselves are capable of self-directed production without corporate elite owners ….” [John Asimakopoulos, “Counter Ideology and Evolutionary Change: A Proposal for a Research and Political Action Program.” Theory in Action. Volume 1, number 1, January 2008. Pages 1-22.]

“If freedom is the social aim, power must be held horizontally. We must all be both rulers and ruled simultaneously, or a system of rulers and subjects is the only alternative. We must all hold power equally in our hands if freedom is to coexist with power. Freedom, in other words, can only be maintained through a sharing of political power, and this sharing happens through political institutions. Rather than being made a monopoly, power should be distributed to us all, thereby allowing all our varied ‘powers’ (of reason, persuasion, decision making, and so on) to blossom. This is the power to create rather than dominate.

“Of course, institutionalizing direct democracy assures only the barest bones of a free society. Freedom is never a done deal, nor is it a fixed notion. New forms of domination will probably always rear their ugly heads. Yet minimally, directly democratic institutions open a public space in which everyone, if they so choose, can come together in a deliberative and decision-making body; a space where everyone has the opportunity to persuade and be persuaded; a space where no discussion or decision is ever hidden, and where it can always be returned to for scrutiny, accountability, or rethinking. Embryonic within direct democracy, if only to function as a truly open policy-making mechanism, are values such as equality, diversity, cooperation, and respect for human worth—hopefully, the building blocks of a liberatory ethics as we begin to self-manage our communities, the economy, and society in an ever widening circle of confederated citizen assemblies.

“As a practice, direct democracy will have to be learned. As a principle, it will have to undergird all decision making. As an institution, it will have to be fought for. It will not appear magically overnight. Rather, it will emerge little by little out of struggles to, as Murray Bookchin phrased it, ‘democratize the republic, radicalize our democracy.’”

[Cindy Milstein. Democracy is Direct. Boston, Massachusetts: The Boston Anarchist Black Cross. 2000. Page 6.]

“I advocate left-libertarian social democracy, and social democracy entails a bit more than just a universal basic income. Social democrats generally want more welfare programs to provide everyone with their basic needs. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness requires health, food, and other basic things. This means that healthcare is itself a basic human right that ought to be provided regardless. Insofar as education becomes necessary, it too becomes a right that society is obligated to provide. Anarchist social democracy also entails the funding of public services and welfare programs (free education, universal healthcare, etc.) through voluntary taxation.

“The rates would be set by the democratic city councils. Of course, the rates would only be a suggestion, as the tax would be voluntary. However, people would willingly pay the suggested amount because (1) the land trust would require proof of having paid the suggested tax as a prerequisite for private land-ownership—you would not be permitted to privately own land without having paid the amount of voluntary tax that your particular community asks of you—and (2) the mutual banks would require the same proof of payment as a prerequisite for opening an account with them or receiving a loan. The benefits conferred on those who pay their share of voluntary taxation would outweigh the cost and prompt most people to voluntary contribute their fair share.

“I advocate a system of voluntary taxation, but I hold that the system ought to be progressive. Amartya Sen has demonstrated the justice of progressive taxation and I follow his analysis. If the system is to be fair, the tax rate must be higher for the wealthy than it is for the poor.”

[W. J. Whitman, “Anarchist Social Democracy: Structure & Theory.” Privately published. Undated. Public domain. Pages 1-40.]

“UUs [Unitarian Universalists] have certainly made mistakes before and continue to do so now, but our strong focus on being consistent in our values as well as a strong tendency towards critical thinking has kept the religion fresh and ever-evolving. The above-mentioned steps being made towards becoming a truly free and equal religion, despite the strong reformist and privileged nature of many UUs, is proof that working with this religion is worthy of our time and effort. If we as anarchists are more vocal within the movement, these sort of changes will be stronger and quicker. In fact, many of the UUs involved in putting on anti-oppression workshops, fundraising for campus ministries, etc. are anarchists. As anarchists, our understanding of privilege, power and oppression are invaluable to those seeking to take on such projects. Also, the anarchist movement is comprised mostly of young adults, precisely the populace the UUA [Unitarian Universalist Association] is seeking to reach out to. If we become active in the religion, those issues which Unitarian Universalists are working on will be deepened by our own experiences and knowledge. It has always been when UUs have had a healthy understanding of power and privilege along with the ability to create non-hierarchical organizations, that they have provided spaces for people to exercise their faith freely and to the fullest. If a strong anti-authoritarian strain consistently runs through the faith, programs such as Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) will continue to empower youth, Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network (UUYAN) will grow, more congregations will prioritize anti-oppression work, the organizational structure of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) will become more horizontal and less hierarchical and other facets of the faith will be truly democratic, accepting and libertarian in nature.” [Clayton Dewey. Anarchism and Unitarian Universalism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2004. Pages 7-8.]

“The Unitarian and Universalist movements emerged and evolved separately during the formative years of the American Republic. Universalism, centered on the doctrine of universal salvation, was organized as a separatist church, in a manner similar to that of early Baptists and Quakers. In contrast, what came to be called Unitarianism in America was from its beginnings less focused theologically; it evolved for a long time as a tendency less than as a doctrine, a growing rejection of the Calvinist orthodoxy of the Puritan-Congregational churches of New England, especially in eastern Massachusetts. Though their enemies labeled them Unitarians, a name they eventually accepted, they did not intend to create a separate church; they were united in their opposition to what they called sectarianism, and preferred to think of themselves as simply ‘liberal Christians.’ Besides, the name Unitarian didn’t really fit. They were more concerned with what classical theology calls the ‘Doctrine of Man’ than the Doctrine of God, and in that sense shared some of the same concerns as the Universalists. Their Enlightenment sensibilities were offended by the Calvinist doctrines of human depravity, original sin, and pre-destination, which held that human beings have no control over their ultimate destiny. The right to self-governance, which inspired the Revolution, was rooted in all these religious ideas, and it is no accident or coincidence that so many of the founders of the Republic were liberal in their religion as well as in their politics.” [The Commission on Appraisal Unitarian Universalist Association. Engaging Our Theological Diversity. Boston, Massachusetts: Unitarian Universalist Association. 2005. Page 19.]

“Unitarian Universalism was formed in 1961 through the merger of two different religions, Unitarianism and Universalism — the first a Christian heresy, the second at least unorthodox, if not also heretical. Unitarianism rejects Trinitarian theology, and Universalism asserts the salvation of all. Historically, Unitarians and Universalists stood up for what they believed, even at the expense of their personal safety. Likewise, Unitarian Universalists are committed to truth and meaning to this day.” [Peter Morales, “Science and the Search for Meaning.” The New Atlantis: The Journal of Technology & Society. Summer, 2013. Pages 119-123.]

“Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious tradition that took its present denominational form in 1961 through the consolidation of the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association, founded respectively in 1793 and 1825. Both Universalism and Unitarianism were originally forms of ‘liberal’ or ‘rational’ Christianity that defined themselves in opposition to Calvinist orthodoxy and revivalist enthusiasm. The former was named for its affirmation that all human beings will achieve salvation; the latter for its rejection of the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. Both gradually opened themselves to various forms of post-Christian faith, to the point that only a minority of Unitarian Universalists today identify as Christians. Unitarian Universalism’s fervent opposition to ‘creeds’ has made room for Buddhists, Jews, pagans, freewheeling mystics, ‘process theists’ in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, ‘religious naturalists’ influenced by Henry Nelson Wieman, and ‘humanists’ who find religious value in humanity itself but not in God or the supernatural. Unitarian Universalists are united by a system of congregational polity that dates back to the Cambridge Platform of 1648 and by a list of seven principles and six sources that guides communal decisionmaking but is not binding on individuals. Most Unitarian Universalists are highly educated and hold liberal or leftist views on sociopolitical issues; most also yearn to build a ‘beloved community’ that transcends divisions of race and class.” [Daniel McKanan, “Unitarianism, Universalism, and Unitarian Universalism.” Religion Compass. Volume 7, number 1, 2013. Pages 15-24.]

“This paper argues that religion does not need clear boundaries on who can be included in a religious tradition and who cannot—for example, certain rituals that a member must practice, or certain beliefs they must profess that they hold—in order to function. A definition of religion which might better apply to traditions like Unitarian Universalism would be one that does not focus on common beliefs, but instead on shared values and commitment to shared ways of living. One such definition comes from Paul Tillich, who states that ‘religion is more than a system of special symbols, rites, and emotions, directed toward a highest being; religion is ultimate concern; it is the state of being grasped by something unconditional, holy, absolute.’” [Emma Christen, “‘We Need Not Think Alike to Love Alike’: The Religious Community of Unitarian Universalism.” Relics, Remnants, and Religion: An Undergraduate Journal in Religious Studies. Volume 2, issue 1 , article 3, 2016. Pages 1-18.]

“Nothing is more common than to hear them [people] say that Universalists believe in no punishment for sin; and their hearers, seizing the notion as most excellent, fail not to extend it far and wide. Many of them honestly think that it is correct. But an objection so utterly false we are almost tired of answering. Universalism is the only sentiment in the world that teaches certain punishment for sin. While all others allow the sinner to go free by repentance, this teaches that God will by no means clear the guilty. Repentance itself will not save him from the just penalty of law. It will save him from sin, but not from its punishment for sins committed. Such, therefore, as misrepresent us ought to go and learn of the wise man: ‘He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.’” [Rev. Norris C. Hodgson. A Denominational Offering from the Literature of Universalism: In Twelve Parts. Boston, Massachusetts: Universalist Publishing House. 1871. Pages 175-176.]

“Organized Universalism, the creation and establishment of the Universalist Church, had its chief, but not exclusive, incitement in the ministry of Rev. John Murray, who, born in Alton, England, December 10 …, 1741, landed in America in the latter part of September, 1770. Although then a young man, he had passed through trying experiences, and had come to the New World hoping to lose himself in its wilds and pass the remainder of his days in obscurity. His father was an Episcopalian and his mother a Presbyterian, and both high Calvinists. His early home-life was clouded by great religious severity; his father, he says, ‘seldom indulging in a smile,’ and teaching him ‘that for any individual, not the elect of God, to say of God, or to God, “Our Father,” was nothing better than blasphemy.’ All his early surroundings impressed him with ‘a terror of religion.’ The coming of the Methodists into his neighborhood gave him new hope, and as he listened to their fervid preaching he began to find delight in religious themes and exercises. John Wesley gave him marked notice by appointing him ‘classleader of forty boys,’ and soon after this he began to preach. He found himself, however, sorely haunted by the Calvinism which his parents championed; and shortly after his father’s death, having opportunity to listen to the preaching of [George] Whitefield, his early opinions were reinforced by what he regarded as the preacher’s demonstrations of their truth. He was at this time residing with his mother in Ireland. Soon after becoming a preacher in [John] Wesley’s connection, and while perplexed with the questions of pre destination and freewill, he went to London, where, for a while, he led a gay, but not immoral, life; but soon con necting himself with Whitefield’s society, he became zeal ously interested in all that tended to its advancement.” [Joseph Henry Allen and Richard Eddy. A History of Unitarians and Universalists in the United States. New York: The Christian Literature Company. 1894. Pages 388-389.]

“… this attempt to promote the interests of our beloved Zion is submitted to ‘the brethren of like precious faith,’ and to the world, with the devout prayer that it may be the instrument of some good to the cause of our blessed Redeemer, and of calling down upon many branches of the church universal that richest of all earthly benedictions, the blessing of the widow and the fatherless, and of him that was ready to perish.” [I. D. Williamson. The Universalist Church Companion Prepared for the Merrimac River Ministerial Council for the Use of Its Members and Others; and by Order of Said Circle. Boston, Massachusetts: A. Tompkins. 1850. Page 26.]

“There cannot be a doubt, that had we seriously united for the purpose of spreading Unitarianism by any and every means, by secret insinuations against those who differ from us, by uncharitable denunciations, and by the other usual arts of sects, we might have produced in this part of the country an Unitarian heat and bitterness not inferiour to that with which Trinitarianism is too often advocated. But not the slightest whisper of any concert for this end has ever reached me; and as to these arts, our people can best say how far we have practised them. Our people will testify, how little we have sought to influence them on the topicks of dis pute among christians, how little we have laboured to make them partisans, how constantly we have besought them to look with candour on other denominations, and to delight in all the marks which others exhibit of piety, and goodness. Our great and constant object has been to promote the spirit of Christ, and we have been persuaded, that in this way we should most effectually promote the interests of christian truth.” [Rev. Thomas Belsham. American Unitarianism: Or, A Brief History of “The Progress and Present State of the Unitarian Churches in America.” Boston, Massachusetts: Nathaniel Willis. 1815. Page 17.]

“I am neither an atheist nor a theist. I define God as the creative life force, which is a fairly broad definition. Almost anyone can enter into that definition. But my experience has been that many Unitarian Universalists resist entering conversations or commitments that use the word God. They say, ‘There is no God,’ or ‘I don’t believe in God.’ But what does this really mean? I agree that symbol of an old bearded man is wrong. I agree that a tremendous amount of harm has been done in the name of that bearded man. And yet, so many Unitarian Universalists cling to this old man in order to beat him up. We have become bullies of this feeble God and are missing the opportunity to stretch ourselves and encounter Creation. Our egos love this feeble, old God because we are able to enjoy the sense of personal power that comes from being self-righteous and clever. In our process of beating up this weak God, we have lost sight of the fact that we are not getting any closer to the authentic spiritual life that is needed to restore our mutilated planet. So we must ask ourselves, ‘Do we want to be right or do we want to survive?’

“The resistance of Unitarian Universalists (and many others who are unaffiliated with organized religion) to encounter or even discuss God is understandable. We live in a culture defined by fear, scarcity, and isolation. Often what is offered as a spiritual resource in this culture is shame-based religion that idolizes a demanding but fickle God who regulates his people through punishment and force. As an alternative, we UUs [Unitarian Universalists] sometimes adopt one of the various prosperity gospels that champion and elevate the individual experience both spiritually and socially, which can result in an odd, narcissistic, spiritual isolation.”

[Ian White Maher, “A Transformative Spiritual Relationship with the Divine.” Turning Point: Essays on a New Unitarian Universalism. Fredric Muir, editor. Boston, Massachusetts: Skinner House Books imprint of the Unitarian Universalist Association. 2016. Pages 133-143.]

“For the production of … goods, … we need a networked, collaborative group of workers who agree among themselves what is to be done and by whom, without the intervention of any managerial hierarchy or bureaucracy. The same message comes out clearly from other examples such as the free software movement.…

“… the PostCapitalist mode of production will turn out to be a form of socialism, but one which differs from the earlier forms of bureaucratic socialism by being more egalitarian and libertarian. This type of socialism I think could be called networked socialism. Paul Mason writes: ‘info-capitalism has created a new agent of change in history: the educated and connected human being.’ Of course the overwhelming majority of educated and connected human beings are white-collar workers. So networked socialism is based on white-collar workers in contrast to earlier forms of socialism, which were based on manual (blue-collar) workers.

“Another feature of networked socialism is that it is international. In the networks, which produce Wikipedia, free software etc., there are members from all over the world. What is important is whether someone is good at doing the job. Where they happen to live is an irrelevance. Capitalism too has gone international with the rise of the multi-national (or transnational) corporations. All this shows that the economic foundations of nationalism are being eroded.…

“Altogether then the difficulties associated with trying to produce digital goods under capitalism disappear once these goods are produced under socialism. Only one problem remains. The type of socialism needed is networked socialism. However, governments, if they tolerate socialism at all, much prefer bureaucratic socialism. This is for obvious reasons. Bureaucratic socialism gives governments much more control. They appoint the top managers of the bureaucratic hierarchy and through them can have a say in what goes on in the organisation. With networked socialism things are different. The government has to pay a group of workers, assign them a task, and then leave them to get on with it without interference. Such a hands-off, libertarian approach is not very appealing to governments, as is clearly shown by the case of scientific (and other) research, which is already financed by the state.…

“… If therefore networked socialism becomes the standard mode of production in the digital sector, it will probably spread to the industrial sector as well, just as capitalist farming replaced earlier pre-capitalist modes of agricultural production.…

“At the moment the overwhelming majority of the political class in the developed world are committed to preserving, and, if possible, extending capitalism. We can hardly expect this class to devote state funding to the production of digital goods by networked socialism, although this is quite a practical policy which would be easy to implement, and would, almost certainly, benefit the economy as a whole. What becomes necessary for the economy cannot, however, be long resisted by politicians, and so changes in politics are very likely.”

[Donald Gillies, “Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future.” Real World Economics Review. Number 73, 2015. Pages 110-119.]

“In contrast to the Asturian insurrection of October 1934, the anarchist revolt of late 1933 is not normally considered a response to the increasing perception of an international and domestic fascist threat. On the contrary, the CNT’s [the anarcho-syndicalist National Confederation of Labor’s] insistence on pursuing a lonely insurrectionist tactic has been taken as evidence of ultra-left indifference among radicals as to the specific danger posed by fascism. According to Chris Ealham, anarchist radicals in this period ‘downplayed the danger of the far Right’, and acted in a sectarian manner that undermined attempts at anti-fascist unity ….” [Danny Evans, “‘Ultra-left’ anarchists and anti-fascism in the Second Republic.” International Journal of Iberian Studies. Volume 29, number 3, September 2016. Pages 241-256.]

“The national liberation struggle of oppressed nationalities must be internationalist in character as it must supplant obsessions with cultural difference with universal ideals of human freedom ….

“… [The] tradition of anarchist anti-imperialism was continued 15 years later in the Ukraine as the Makhnovist movement organised a titanic peasant revolt that not only smashed the German occupation of the Ukraine, and held off the invading Red and White armies until 1921, but redistributed land, established worker- peasant self-management in many areas, and created a Revolutionary Insurgent Army under worker-peasant control.…

“Opposition to imperialism was a crucial part of anarchist anti-militarist campaigns in the imperialist centres, which stressed that colonial wars did not serve the interests of workers but rather the purposes of capitalism.”

[Lucien van der Walt. Towards a history of anarchist anti-imperialism: In this struggle, only the workers and peasants will go all the way to the end. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Pages 5-6.]

“Like the society to which it has played the faithful servant, the university is bankrupt. This bankruptcy is not only financial. It is the index of a more fundamental insolvency, one both political and economic, which has been a long time in the making. No one knows what the university is for anymore. We feel this intuitively. Gone is the old project of creating a cultured and educated citizenry; gone, too, the special advantage the degree-holder once held on the job market. These are now fantasies, spectral residues that cling to the poorly maintained halls.

“Incongruous architecture, the ghosts of vanished ideals, the vista of a dead future: these are the remains of the university. Among these remains, most of us are little more than a collection of querulous habits and duties. We go through the motions of our tests and assignments with a kind of thoughtless and immutable obedience propped up by subvocalized resentments. Nothing is interesting, nothing can make itself felt. The world-historical with its pageant of catastrophe is no more real than the windows in which it appears.

“For those whose adolescence was poisoned by the nationalist hysteria following September 11ᵗʰ [2001], public speech is nothing but a series of lies and public space a place where things might explode (though they never do). Afflicted by the vague desire for something to happen—without ever imagining we could make it happen ourselves—we were rescued by the bland homogeneity of the internet, finding refuge among friends we never see, whose entire existence is a series of exclamations and silly pictures, whose only discourse is the gossip of commodities. Safety, then, and comfort have been our watchwords. We slide through the flesh world without being touched or moved. We shepherd our emptiness from place to place.

“But we can be grateful for our destitution: demystification is now a condition, not a project. University life finally appears as just what it has always been: a machine for producing compliant producers and consumers. Even leisure is a form of job training. The idiot crew of the frat houses drink themselves into a stupor with all the dedication of lawyers working late at the office. Kids who smoked weed and cut class in high-school now pop Adderall and get to work. We power the diploma factory on the treadmills in the gym. We run tirelessly in elliptical circles.”

[Research and Destroy. Communiqué from an Absent Future: on the terminus of student life. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 1-2.]

“Anarchism must be based on class, but it must also be feminist, indigenist, anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-heteronormative, etc. In order to be consistent with anarchist principles, all forms of hierarchy must be opposed. A victory against one form of oppression is at best an incomplete victory. Hierarchies and oppressions cannot be dealt with implicitly or at a later date, they must be confronted head on the minute that they are recognized, and this organizing must be done prefiguratively, the means of ending all oppressions must themselves be based on the principles of freedom, equality, and solidarity.…

“One of the major debates within anarchism is over how or even whether anarchists ought to be organized. This debate between anarchists who advocate for formal organization (organizationalists) and those who prefer looser networks of association tends to be characterized by advocates of the latter tendency as a generational divide (anti-organizationalists).…

“… there are a significant number of activists involved in anarchist organization whose political formation must have taken place decades before they were even born. Also incorrect is the implication that organizationalists are class reductionists that ignore indigenous, feminist, ecological, and cultural struggle.”

[Common Cause Ottawa. Organized Anarchism in the Anti-Capitalist Struggle. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Pages 4-5.]

“… individuals’ experiences of sexuality and anarchist identity are affected by their situation within local communities, so it turned out to be instructive to talk to people who were situated in a variety of locations. At the same time, the construction of anarchist identity is not wholly determined by local context, given the circulation of anarchist discourses and bodies within national and global networks, so the account of anarchist sexuality I offer here is, I think, representative (though not, of course, exhaustive). That said, I would hesitate to generalize any of the specific experiences or discourses I discuss here to the anarchist movement as it exists beyond North America.” [Laura Portwood-Stacer, “Constructing anarchist sexuality: Queer identity, culture, and politics in the anarchist movement.” Sexualities. Volume 13, number 4, August 2010. Pages 479-493.]

“Rent strikes typically involve the collective refusal of a group of tenants to pay an increase in rent, although we have come across one case where the total rent due was withheld. In this paper we attempt to sketch a history of this form of direct action, although the story is inevitably somewhat fragmentary. We also include some results of a survey carried out in May 1970 amongst tenants on an East London estate who were involved in a rent strike against their landlord, the Greater London Council.

“One reason for examining forms of direct political action such as squatting or withholding rent is that, unlike voting behaviour, they are likely to be highly significant for those involved; they demand of participants not only involvement in illegal behaviour but also a normative commitment quite different from that necessary to sustain the ritualistic placing of a cross on a ballot paper every four or five years. We also suggest that the material we have gathered is not only of intrinsic interest but has significant bearing on theoretical issues concerning the class consciousness of British workers.”

[Bert Moorhouse, Mary Wilson, and Chris Chamberlain, “Rent Strikes — Direct Action and the Working Class.” The Socialist Register. Volume 9, 1972. Pages 133-156.]

“Anarchy is what happens wherever order is not imposed by force. It is freedom: the process of continually reinventing ourselves and our relationships. Any freely occurring process or phenomenon—a rainforest, a circle of friends, your own body—is an anarchic harmony that persists through constant change. Top-down control, on the other hand, can only be maintained by constraint or coercion: the precarious discipline of the high-school detention room, the factory farm in which pesticides and herbicides defend sterile rows of genetically modified corn, the fragile hegemony of a superpower.” [CrimethInc. To Change Everything: An Anarchist Appeal. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Pages 10-11.]

“Direct action has a rich heritage here in North America, extending back to the Boston Tea Party and beyond. Despite this, there are many misunderstandings about it, in part due to the ways it has been misrepresented in the corporate media.…

“Terrorism is calculated to intimidate and thus paralyze others. Nearly all direct action, on the other hand, is intended to inspire and thus motivate others by demonstrating the power people have to accomplish goals themselves. While terrorism is the domain of a specialized class that seeks power for itself alone, direct action demonstrates tactics others can take up themselves, empowering people to take control of their own lives.…

“To say that it is violent to destroy the machinery of a slaughterhouse or to break windows belonging to a political party that promotes war is to prioritize property over human and animal life. This objection subtly validates violence against living creatures by focusing all attention on property rights and away from more fundamental issues. Direct action may obstruct the activities or destroy the property of a corporation or institution—but if the latter is itself involved in violent activity, then such an act is not violence but rather the prevention of violence.…

“Unfortunately, whether or not an action is illegal is a poor measure of whether or not it is just. The Jim Crow laws were, after all, laws. To object to an action on the grounds that it is illegal is to sidestep the more important question of whether or not it is the right thing to do. To argue that we must always obey laws, even when we consider them to be unethical or to enforce unethical conditions, is to suggest that the arbitrary pronouncements of the legal establishment possess a higher moral authority than our own consciences, and to demand complicity in the face of injustice. When laws protect injustice, illegal activity is no vice, and law-abiding docility is no virtue.…

“If it makes sense for your action to be organized openly, establish a format, such as a public spokescouncil, in which to work out a strategy and tactics. Invite friends, or circulate fliers, or go door to door announcing it. Have a proposal in mind ahead of time, in case no one else does.

“For more clandestine actions, brainstorm in a secure environment with a trusted friend or two. Keep your ideas to yourselves as you hash them out so you won’t have already given them away when you’re ready to try them.

“Brainstorming can start with a problem you want to solve, or a social contribution you want to make; it can be informed by the resources you have, the kind of experience you desire, or the people you want to work with. You can plot a single short adventure, or a long-term campaign. Often, the best brainstorming doesn’t happen consciously, but in the course of daydreams and informal conversations—it’s a good policy to trust that your craziest ideas can become reality and try them out.

“Even if you are attending a massive event organized by others, always have a plan so you can contribute to it in your own way.”

[Anonymous. A Civilian’s Guide to Direct Action: What It Is, What It’s Good For, How It Works. Salem, Oregon: CrimethInc. Agents Provocateurs. 2010. No pagination.]

“The opposite of direct action is representation. There are many kinds of representation—words are used to represent ideas and experiences, the viewers of a soap opera let their own hopes and fears be represented by those of the protagonists, the pope daims to represent God—but the most well-known example today can be found in the electoral system. In this society, we’re encouraged to think of voting as our primary means of exercising power and participating socially. Yet whether one votes with a ballot for a politician’s representation, with dollars for a corporate product, or with one’s wardrobe for a youth culture, voting is an act of deferral, in which the voter picks a person or system or concept to represent her interests. This is an unreliable way to exercise power, to say the least.” [CrimethInc Workers’ Collective. Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook. Olympia, Washington: CrimethInc Workers’ Collective. 2004. Page 13.]

“What I find sorely lacking in most of the discussions of veganism I encounter is any sense of economic context. Usually, the question of animal oppression is approached only in terms of compassion and prejudice: animals are exploited and destroyed, vegan activists would have us believe, simply because we see them as subhuman and are willing to abuse them in order to satisfy our greed.

“I suspect that the problem runs much deeper than mere cruelty and avarice. Under capitalism, it’s not just animals that are exploited — it’s everyone and everything from farmlands and forests to farmhands and grocery clerks. The oppression of animals is just a little more obvious to us because it involves the murder of living things; but it’s not just animals that have been enslaved and transformed by our society, it’s everything, ourselves included. Without an understanding of how and why our social/economic system drives us to seek to dominate and exploit everything, we will not be able to alter the way animals are treated in any significant or long-lasting way. Capitalism forces us to evaluate our environment and each other according to market value. Under the capitalist system, every man is encouraged to ask the question of how useful the animals and people around him might be as economic resources in his competition with others. Everything becomes fair game for exploitation—because if you don’t exploit something in the rush to gain the upper hand in the free market’s ‘exchange of goods and services,’ someone else will exploit it, and quite possibly use it to exploit you. Those who have realized this are not afraid to exploit animals or humans, to treat them as objects, because they believe that the alternative is to be treated as objects and exploited by others themselves. In this way, capitalism divides us against each other and spurs on our destruction of the environment.”

[CrimethInc Workers’ Collective. Veganism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2000. Page 1.]

“A … considered naturalism takes a … [certain] route. Foremost: it realizes that once essentialized a naturalist argument can be used for buttressing sheer conservatism and new age narcissism. It is also careful not to tumble into the mainstream liberal trap of doing away with our visions and nightmares, fallings and tremblings. One does not look for compensatory escapisms — either way. Such naturalism vouchsafes by increased differentiation and a processual way of thinking. It acknowledges that our serious ecological dislocations are related to specific social, aesthetic and ethical issues. Mere sublimation to Gaia or to any undifferentiated notion of planetary oneness sadly leads to an Eco-la-la land. A considered naturalism advances an ethics of complementarity in which humans play an accommodating and creative role in perpetuating the integrity of our ecology, in unfolding an evolution that [Peter] Kropotkin so treasures. In ontological terms, dialectical causality is not merely motion, force, or changes of form but things and phenomena in development, the differentiation of potentiality into actuality, in the course of which each new actuality becomes the potentiality for further differentiation and actualization. The reorganization of municipalities, their confederation into ever-larger networks that form a dual power in resisting the nation-state and remaking the constituents of people’s representatives into men and women who participate in a direct democracy — all may take a considerable period of time to attain. But in the end, they alone can potentially eliminate the domination of human by human and thereby deal with those ecological problems whose growing magnitude threatens the existence of a biosphere than can support advanced forms of life. In the words of Murray Bookchin, someone who carried forward Kropotkin’s legacy most creatively in recent times, perhaps the most apposite word for this kind of development is growth — growth not by mere accretion but by a truly immanent process of organic self-formation in a graded and increasingly differentiated direction.” [Prasanta Chakravarty. An Eco-Anarchist Manifesto: Municipalizing Nature. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 6.]

“Let me be … enumerative with what might be called an anarcho-empiricist argument: 1) Human nature is an empirical process, that is, it is dependent upon observation and experience, and may better be called human conditioning; 2) those Hobbesian characteristics which seem to make anarchism unfeasible are thus conditioned into persons from their experience; 3) the feasibility of anarchism, then, depends upon both the deconditioning of individuals and societies from authoritarian, statist experiences, and the conditioning of individuals and societies with libertarian, anarchistic experiences – though it could be argued that such experiences, being dictated internally by individuals, are not conditioning to the extent that experiences dictated externally to individuals are.” [Desmond S. Peeples, “Toward an Anarcho-Empiricism: Integrating Precedent, Theory, and Impetus in the Anarchist Project.” Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice. 2012. Pages 1-15.]

“Antihumanism is a cornerstone which holds gender nihilist analysis together. It is the point from which we begin to understand our present situation; it is crucial. By antihumanism, we mean a rejection of essentialism. There is no essential human. There is no human nature. There is no transcendent self. To be a subject is not to share in common a metaphysical state of being (ontology) with other subjects.…

“The gender nihilist says ‘I am a woman’ and means that they are located within a certain position in a matrix of power which constitutes them as such.…

“The gender nihilist, the gender abolitionist, looks at the system of gender itself and see’s the violence at its core. We say no to a positive embrace of gender. We want to see it gone. We know appealing to the current formulations of power is always a liberal trap. We refuse to legitimize ourselves.”

[Alyson Escalante. Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Pages 3-4.]

“It’s been a few months since I first wrote and attempted to distribute Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto. In that time, the reactions to this piece have been diverse and divisive. While there have certainly been some who have praised it as useful, there has been some very pointed (and often very important) criticisms of the piece. It is in light of this criticism that I am writing this addendum. My piece lacked a few important things, namely: context, an explicit address of race, and explicit articulation of gender as a colonial product, and perhaps a clarification as to the nature of the piece itself. I hope to add those here.…

“… [Here is] the first important addition to the text: context. I wrote the anti-manifesto out of desperation. Like many trans women before me (Susan Stryker has articulated this phenomena beautifully), I turned to theory to try to explain and contextualize my lived experience. Gender Nihilism was conceived in community, through discussion between myself and a group of comrades primarily composed of other trans women of color. It was an attempt to articulate how gender had affected us all and to expose the violence of that. What we discussed was largely centered on a few thinkers, but one who was very important to us but did not make it into my piece was Maria Lugones. Through her work on the coloniality of gender, we had tried to articulate how the gender we refer to in gender nihilism is not a term inclusive of indigenous and non-western genders, but is a specific regime on knowledge imposed onto bodies through colonization. For the sake of time, I did not include this in the Anti-Manifesto; for those of us having this conversation this assumption and framing of decolonial critique of gender was implicit.

“This was a mistake, not everyone had this context. Without this context it quite understandably appeared that my critique of gender was not of a specific colonial phenomena but rather of all the diverse, and multiplicitous phenomena which that term could possible call to mind. This was wrong of me to exclude, this was a mistake and this is why this addendum is necessary. If you want to understand this context I highly suggest you engage the work of Maria Lugones, especially Towards a Decolonial Feminism. I no longer blog, but the work is easy and I trust that if you are interested you can explore it yourself. I also implore you to listen to the voices of the other folks involved in Gender Nihilism. I think its telling that I am presented as the voice of the gender nihilism, when two of the other largest contributors are indigenous trans women. Their voices matter in this debate more than mine, yet people have completely and consistently centered my voice and perspective. This is harmful.”

[Alyson Escalante. Addendum to Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Pages 1-2.]

“We assume the activity of reproduction as the paradigm for contemporary times. By reproduction we do not intend the merely heterosexual, biological regeneration of the species, but rather the entire cycle of activity generating and regenerating the human for the market and the social world. We therefore consider closed the opposition between Marxist or materialist feminism and symbolic feminism. The reproductive paradigm may concern all the subjects falling outside of the heterosexual framework or that do not take on a gendered perspective. The queer subject, as all of us, lives depending on the relations and necessities of material conditions and on the means for affirming a dignified life, whenever she cares to recognize the materiality of her experience.

“… The reproductive paradigm takes place in post-patriarchal times, in the subversion of the modern categories that have regulated human life: nature/culture, domestic activity/work, private/public, economic/social, inclusion/exclusion. By reproduction we mean therefore the physical and mental generation and regeneration of the human in her primary relational dimension, between family and society, between individual and collective conducts, between necessarily irrepressible activities and relationally free activities. From bioethics committees to informational work, from the return of voluntary work up to the service industry – everything speaks to the end of these borders.

“… The reproductive paradigm is neither an alternative nor a complement to production; it registers the metamorphoses of production and is its essential polarity. We consider reproduction the blind spot of the economic and political tradition of western modernity. It is on this blind spot that the conquest of capitalism, i.e. inequality, exploitation, and injustice, reconstitutes itself. Feminist thought has well-tested tools to position itself on this terrain, developing a conflict capable of living up to the transformations of the present. The reproductive paradigm unveils how, from epoch to epoch, the border between the production of goods and the reproduction of the human displaces itself and redefines which activities are unskilled (simple labor), which activities are necessary for survival (necessary labor), which activities are skilled and valorized accordingly, relocating in this way the areas used by exploitation and oppression. How is it possible that today an hour of English translation pays less than an hour of housework in another person’s house?

“… The reproductive paradigm stresses how debates in the global North and West about care do not confront the economic effects neoliberalism produces on a grand scale, nor do they confront the criteria of valorization and depreciation of such activity. ‘Taking care of the world’ must be taken literally. It means taking on the harsh materiality of the maintenance of living; positioning oneself on the grand scale in which we live; reappropriating measures against self-commodification or commodification of the other, ‘the cleaning lady and the caregiver’; it means therefore generating and orienting the conflictual practices aimed at reappropriating the means of the quality of living. Is the appreciation enough for me – an eventual gratitude, the recognition and the fantasy of a promise for the near future in return for what I have done – when nobody cares how I pay the rent?

“… The reproductive paradigm does not coincide with the diagnoses of the feminization of society, the market, or work. It is a paradigm that – besides indicating the extension of the responsibility [carico] for the continuous, active regeneration of the relational bodies that we are and in which we consist to all subjects – intends to identify, between production and reproduction, the shifting line of value which from time to time redefines what is unskilled labor, necessary labor, and valorized labor. The rhetoric around the feminization of work and society is only the ‘operational,’ anthropological form of neoliberalism, which has already established the general framework of policies, priorities, and objectives in other places – whether by those who build statistical indicators or elaborate valuation criteria in ratings, or in the distribution of EU [European Union] and national funds… For whose desire am I performing free or underpaid work?

“… The reproductive paradigm increases the descriptive capacity of what has been put under the title of ‘cognitive labor’ or ‘immaterial labor.’ We welcome the common ground created by the diagnoses of the ‘hegemony of immaterial labor’ and the diffusion of the biopolitical paradigm, but we want a better grasp on the materiality of lives. In addition to the formula ‘valuation [messa a valore] of linguistic, relational, and affective capacities,’ we equip ourselves with sharper tools for describing the activities not yet seen as necessary and therefore left to the other, to others. The reproductive paradigm, maintaining a tension with the activities productive of goods, allows the distinction between material and immaterial labor to be dropped and to find it again as a distinction between renaturalized activities (those made invisible and unspeakable), and valorized, waged, and devalued activities. How do we perceive and analyze complex but renaturalized work: does it remain invisible because it is taken to be as obvious as breathing, is it considered as the uncounted surplus in immaterial labor service, or is it already political?”

[Anna Simone and Federica Giardini. Reproduction as Paradigm: Elements for a Feminist Political Economy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Pages 3-4.]

“The Human Rights Enterprise as a Struggle Against States and Capital

“It is important to define what is meant by the ‘human rights enterprise’ as a central concept moving forward. As a uniquely sociological concept, the human rights enterprise refers to any and all efforts to define and/or realize fundamental dignity and ‘right’ for all human beings. More typically, under the dominance of legal studies and political science, human rights are only defined and discussed in relation to HR [human rights] instruments or human rights as they have manifested in international law. Where sociology does not necessarily pre-suppose the relevance or inevitability of the state, HR instruments comprise only one small piece of the larger whole. The human rights enterprise represents this whole, where grassroots struggles outside of and potentially against the formal state arena are seen as equally relevant to interpreting, critiquing, and realizing human rights in practice. The human rights enterprise should be seen as the sum total of all struggles to define and realize universal human dignity and ‘right.’”

[William T. Armaline and Davita Silfen Glasberg, “What Will States Really Do For Us? The Human Rights Enterprise and Pressure from Below.” Societies Without Borders. Volume 4, issue 3, 2009. Pages 430-451.]

“Scholars developing a concept they are calling the ‘human rights enterprise’ … note that the values that undergird human rights are often addressed through extra-institutional actors, including social movements from below.…

“This approach—embodied by ‘the human rights enterprise’—has been put forward as a sociological method in opposition to ‘the dominance of law and political science’ where ‘human rights are primarily defined and discussed in relation to human rights instruments, or human rights as they have manifested as international law’ …. Human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, or the Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (three of the most well-known international human rights instruments) are intended to work with states, or groupings of states, as the guarantors of those rights …. In those cases where replacements to formal state systems of justice are sought, such as truth and reconciliation commissions, it is states who empower them?this is true of retributive, transitional, and restorative approaches to justice within the framework of human rights ….”

[Deric Shannon, “Food Justice, Direct Action, and the Human Rights Enterprise.” Critical Sociology. Volume 42, number 6, September 2016. Pages 799-814.]

“This body of work has been organized to focus on the struggle to formally recognize concepts of human rights and realize human rights practice in the United States, drawing primarily upon sociological literature and perspectives. Thus, it is important to define what is meant by the human rights enterprise … as a central concept moving forward. As a uniquely sociological concept, the human rights enterprise refers to any and all efforts to define or realize fundamental dignity and “right” for all human beings. More typically, under the dominance of law and political science, human rights are primarily defined and discussed in relation to human rights instruments, or human rights as they have manifested as international law. Human rights instruments include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the two covenants (International Covenant on Civil and Political Human Rights, International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights), various international conventions (such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Convention on the Elimination of Racism), regional human rights treaties, and the regulatory bodies assigned to each treaty, meant for implementation, information dissemination, and enforcement. Where sociology does not presuppose the relevance or inevitability of the state, human rights instruments and the formal human rights regime comprise only one small piece of the larger whole. The human rights enterprise represents this whole, where grassroots struggles outside of and potentially against the formal state arena are seen as equally relevant to interpreting, critiquing, and realizing human rights in practice. The human rights enterprise should, again, be seen as the sum total of all struggles to define and realize universal human dignity and ‘right.’” [William T. Armaline, Davita Silfen Glasberg, and Bandana Purkayastha, “Introduction: Human Rights in the United States.” Human Rights in Our Own Backyard: Injustice and Resistance in the United States. William T. Armaline, Davita Silfen Glasberg, and Bandana Purkayastha, editors. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2011. Pages 1-6.]

“My particular theoretical approach or lens draws upon both critical pedagogy and anarchist theory ….” [Abraham P. DeLeon, “Education, Human Rights, and the State: Toward New Visions.” Human Rights in Our Own Backyard: Injustice and Resistance in the United States. William T. Armaline, Davita Silfen Glasberg, and Bandana Purkayastha, editors. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2011. Pages 78-90.]

“Unfortunately, the dismissal of anarchist thought tends to move even further away when discussing philosophical and theoretical frameworks in education. Although there are many educational researchers who frame their work within critical perspectives (Marxism, neo-Marxism, Autonomist Marxism, and Marxist Humanism), the majority of research and teaching practices are confined to ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ ideological debates.

“… I wanted to emphasize the important contributions anarchism has made to educational praxis. Additionally, I wanted the book to disrupt dominant discussions regarding formal state-run education and explore the more creative spaces of resistance that emerge out of anarchist pedagogies and nonstatist structures. Moreover, from the body of work illustrated by the contributors, it is evident that there is not one defining position on anarchist pedagogy. In some cases, the fluid characteristics of anarchism and the pedagogical processes that individuals and collectives engage in are situated and nestled into the different educative spaces we inhabit. With this in mind, within these pages there are opportunities for anarchists to explore and critically reflect.”

[Robert H. Haworth, “Introduction.” Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education. Robert H. Haworth, editor. Oakland, California: PM Press. 2012. Pages 1-10.]

“One of the key concepts invoked in feminist pedagogy is critical thinking. Yet, arguably, as Women’s Studies became entrenched within the institutional structure of academia, the room for experimental pedagogy shrunk. While early programs were often collectively operated, today’s departments are run with a hierarchical structure. In order to attract students, courses are shaped to fit university-wide learning goals. Accountability in Gender and Women’s Studies has increasingly shifted from student and faculty activists to university administrations. Still, I believe that there is room in Gender and Women’s Studies for creative pedagogical solutions and that anarchist pedagogy can have a space here.” [Stina Soderling, “Anarchist Pedagogy in the Gender and Women’s Studies Classroom.” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, & Social Justice. Volume 37, number 2, 2016. Pages 44-53.]

“The alternative argued for by the post-left anarchist synthesis is still being created. It cannot be claimed by any single theorist or activist because it’s a project that was in the air long before it started becoming a concrete set of proposals, texts and interventions. Those seeking to promote the synthesis have been primarily influenced by both the classical anarchist movement up to the Spanish Revolution on the one hand, and several of the most promising critiques and modes of intervention developed since the 60s. The most important critiques involved include those of everyday life and the spectacle, of ideology and morality, of industrial technology, of work and of civilization. Modes of intervention focus on the concrete deployment of direct action in all facets of life. Rather than aiming at the construction of institutional or bureaucratic structures, these interventions aim at maximal critical effectiveness with minimal compromise in constantly changing networks of action.” [Jason McQuinn. Post-Left Anarchy: Leaving the Left Behind. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 3-4.]

“Why has there been such a long history of conflict and enmity between anarchists and the left? It is because there are two fundamentally different visions of social change embodied in the range of their respective critiques and practices (although any particular group or movement always includes contradictory elements). At its simplest, anarchists-especially anarchists who identify least with the left?commonly engage in a practice which refuses to set itself up as a political leadership apart from society, refuses the inevitable hierarchy and manipulation involved in building mass organizations, and refuses the hegemony of any single dogmatic ideology. The left, on the other hand, has most commonly engaged in a substitutive, representational practice in which mass organizations are subjected to an elitist leadership of intellectual ideologues and opportunistic politicians. In this practice the party substitutes itself for the mass movement, and the party leadership substitutes itself for the party.” [Jason McQuinn. Post-Left Anarchy? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 2.]

“The expression post-left anarchism is implicitly critical of leftism. Certainly I meant it that way. Leftism is something to be surpassed. “Post-left anarchy,” I wrote, ‘is poised to articulate – not a program – but a number of revolutionary themes with contemporary relevance and resonance.’ Writing as I was against [Murray] Bookchin, I provided a short, non-exclusive list of differences. I suggested that post-left anarchism was (1) ‘unambiguously anti-political’ – no voting, for instance; (2); hedonistic (‘Many people wonder what’s wrong with wanting to be happy’); and (3) if not necessarily rejective, then at least suspicious of modern technology and the extravagant liberatory claims made for it.” [Bob Black. Notes on ‘Post-Left Anarchism.’ Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Pages 7-8.]

“While still recognising the contextual and temporal natures of economic practices – systems of ‘archy’ and ‘anarchy’ could theoretically found within any taxonomy – a general interpretation of anarchist modes of organisation in this taxonomy would also capture these as a continuum. All things being equal, anarchist economic praxis will be most present toward the top-left hand side [non-exchanged labor], and be more absent the further right [including formal paid and unpaid work in the private sector] the work practices appear along the spectrum. In this context two important caveats need to be made.” [Richard J. White and Colin C. Williams, “Anarchist economic practices in a ‘capitalist’ society: Some implications for organisation and the future of work.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, 2014. Pages 951-975.]

“The term ‘anarchist economics’ contains two related concepts. One is the anarchist critique of capitalism, the other the suggestions for how an anarchist economy would function. Both are interrelated. What we are opposed to in capitalism will be reflected in our visions of a libertarian economy just as our hopes and dreams of a free society will inform our analysis of the current system. Both need to be understood as both are integral to each other.” [Chris Spannos, “Examining the History of Anarchist Economics to See the Future.” The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2012. AK Press ebook edition.]

“It is … [a] post-capitalist future that motivates us to write, study, and struggle. It is the power of possibility that often gives us the desire to even get out of bed in the morning in a world like ours where possibilities are so often pushed to the margins in favor of a boring, violent, and fundamentalist belief in the necessity and superiority of the status quo. It is our hope that we can add to our resistance strategies against capital, but more so that we can aid in toppling capitalism altogether and creating a livable future for ourselves, each other, and the many inhabitants that we share this world with. Anarchist economics, to be worthy of the name, should be a part of that larger project.” [Abbey Volcano and Deric Shannon, “Capitalism in the 2000s: Some Broad Strokes for Beginners.” The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2012. AK Press ebook edition.]

“… as anti-capitalists, anarchists have always been concerned with economics. We participated (and continue to participate) in revolutions and insurrections directed against capitalism and class society. We attempt to embody anti-capitalist values in the ways that we engage with other people and our world more generally. Since anarchists have always been preoccupied with the problem of capitalism and how we might move beyond it into communities of mutual aid and cooperation, it is necessary to start, in an anarchist economics, with that which we oppose in economics—capitalism.” [Deric Shannon, Anthony J. Nocella, II, John Asimakopoulos, “Anarchist Economics: A Holistic View.” The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2012. AK Press ebook edition.]

“By focusing on economics, a severely neglected component of anarchist thought, The Accumulation of Freedom represents one of the latest contributions to the ongoing development of anarchist studies. It seeks to refute the common misconception that Marxism encompasses the entirety of anti-capitalist economics while anarchism is an irrational dream.” [Mark Bray, “The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics.” Theory In Action. Volume 5, number 4, October 2012. Pages 103-106.]

“The book invites lots of other questions. How to implement anarchist economics in a world that is interdependent on a world scale? Will we be able to produce differently goods that nowadays are made in large industries (aeroplanes, ships)? What to do with people who do not want to comply with the new economy? Should we force them into liberty, should we apply democratic-centralist methods of decision-making? It is to be hoped that this book will find a welcome not only in anarchist circles. The problems it addresses, the choices various authors suggest, the solutions they propose, have to be considered by a wide audience.” [Bert Altena, “The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 21, number 1, spring–summer 2013. Pages 117-119.]

“… anarchist economics will develop after a revolution, as an anarchist economy evolves. We cannot predict the end point, as our vision is impoverished by capitalism. All we can do today is sketch a libertarian society as it emerges from the abolition of class and hierarchy, a sketch based on our analysis and critique of capitalism, the struggle against it and our hopes and dreams.” [Anarcho. Anarchist Economics. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 8.]

“So what is Anarchist economics? It means, I think, two things. The first is an anarchist analysis and critique of capitalism while the second are ideas on how an anarchist economy could function. The two are obviously inter-related. What we are opposed to in capitalism will be reflected in our visions of a libertarian economy just as our hopes and dreams of a free society will inform our analysis.” [Anarcho. The Economics of Anarchism. Fordsburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 2014. Page 13.]

“Anarchist theory encompasses a heterodox compilation of ideas, which mean different things to different people and which are constantly in flux and evolving.…

“Although clear-cut blueprints about an anarchist political economy and concise roadmaps on how to get there are impossible to draw up, anarchist utopias provide valuable inspiration for prefiguring an egalitarian distribution of wealth and power in a society. If we understand utopianism as ‘perpetually exploring new ways to perfect an imperfect reality’ …, then the mere possibility of envisioning a different world already holds the prospect of it becoming a viable project …. Such utopias should however not be unduly romanticized or idealised as they can easily transmute into dogmatic orthodoxies …. Importantly, utopias always have to be re-envisaged in the light of past and real-existing practices.”

[Angela Wigger, “A critical appraisal of what could be an anarchist political economy.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, November 2014. Pages 739-751.]

“The only thing I know that J. R. R. Tolkien and Salvador Dali had in common — or rather, I suppose I should say, the only significant or unexpected thing, since they obviously had all sorts of other things in common: they were male, bipedal, human, rough contemporaries, celebrities, Catholics, and so on — was that each man on at least one occasion said he was drawn simultaneously toward anarchism and monarchism. In the case of Dali, it was probably a meaningless remark, since almost everything he ever said was; whenever he got past the point of “Please pass the butter” or “That will cost you a great deal of money,” he generally gave up any pretense of trying to communicate with other people. But Tolkien was, in his choleric way, giving voice to his deepest convictions regarding the ideal form of human society — albeit fleeting voice. The text of his sole anarcho-monarchist manifesto, such as it is, comes from a letter he wrote to his son Christopher in 1943 ….

“One can at least sympathize, then, with Tolkien’s view of monarchy. There is, after all, something degrading about deferring to a politician, or going through the silly charade of pretending that “public service” is a particularly honorable occupation, or being forced to choose which band of brigands, mediocrities, wealthy lawyers, and (God spare us) idealists will control our destinies for the next few years. But a king — a king without any real power, that is — is such an ennoblingly arbitrary, such a tender and organically human institution. It is easy to give our loyalty to someone whose only claim on it is an accident of heredity, because then it is a free gesture of spontaneous affection that requires no element of self-deception, and that does not involve the humiliation of having to ask to be ruled. The ideal king would be rather like the king in chess: the most useless piece on the board, which occupies its square simply to prevent any other piece from doing so, but which is somehow still the whole game. There is something positively sacramental about its strategic impotence. And there is something blessedly gallant about giving one’s wholehearted allegiance to some poor inbred ditherer whose chief passions are Dresden china and the history of fly-fishing, but who nonetheless, quite ex opere operato, is also the bearer of the dignity of the nation, the anointed embodiment of the genius gentis — a kind of totem or, better, mascot.

“As for Tolkien’s anarchism, I think it obvious that he meant it in the classical sense: not the total absence of law and governance, but the absence of a political archetes — that is, of the leadership principle as such. In Tolkien’s case, it might be better to speak of a ‘radical subsidiarism,’ in which authority and responsibility for the public weal are so devolved to the local and communal that every significant public decision becomes a matter of common interest and common consent. Of course, such a social vision could be dismissed as mere agrarian and village primitivism; but that would not have bothered Tolkien, what with his proto- ecologist view of modernity.

“Now, obviously, none of this anarcho-monarchism is an actual program for political action or reform. But that is not the point. We all have to make our way as best we can across the burning desert floor of history, and those who do so with the aid of ‘political philosophies’ come in two varieties. There are those whose political visions hover tantalizingly near on the horizon, like inviting mirages, and who are as likely as not to get the whole caravan killed by trying to lead it off to one or another of those nonexistent oases. And then there are those whose political dreams are only cooling clouds, easing the journey with the meager shade of a gently ironic critique, but always hanging high up in the air, forever out of reach.”

[David Bentley Hart. A Splendid Wickedness and Other Essays. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2016. Ebook edition.]

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the an and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to ‘King George’s council, Winston and his gang,’ it would go a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy [government by ‘them’]. Anyway the proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. And at least it is done only to a small group of men who know who their master is. The mediævals were only too right in taking nolo efiscopari [sic; Latin, nōlō episcopārī, ‘I do not want to be bishop’] as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier [‘minister’ i.e., Arabic/ʿArabiyyaẗ, وَزِير, wazīr; Persian/Fārsī, وَزِیر, vazīr; ʾUrdū, وَزِیرَ, vazīra; or Turkish/Türk Dili, vezir] (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers. And so on down the line. But, of course, the fatal weakness of all that – after all only the fatal weakness of all good natural things in a bad corrupt unnatural world – is that it works and has worked only when all the world is messing along in the same good old inefficient human way. The quarrelsome, conceited Greeks managed to pull it off against Xerxes; but the abominable chemists and engineers have put such a power into Xerxes’ hands, and all ant-communities, that decent folk don’t seem to have a chance. We are all trying to do the Alexander-touch – and, as history teaches, that orientalized Alexander and all his generals. The poor boob fancied (or liked people to fancy) he was the son of Dionysus [Ancient Greek/A̓rchaía Hellēniká, Διόνυσος, Diónysos], and died of drink. The Greece that was worth saving from Persia perished anyway; and became a kind of Vichy-Hellas, or Fighting-Hellas (which did not fight), talking about Hellenic honour and culture and thriving on the sale of the early equivalent of dirty postcards. But the special horror of the present world is that the whole damned thing is in one bag. There is nowhere to fly to. Even the unlucky little Samoyedes [Russian Cyrillic, Самоидес, Samoides, i.e., a Siberian tribe], I suspect, have tinned food and the village loudspeaker telling [Joseph] Stalin’s bed-time stories about Democracy and the wicked Fascists who eat babies and steal sledge-dogs. There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism,’ may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.” [J.R.R. Tolkien. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Humphrey Carpenter with Christopher Tolkien, editors. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers. 2006. Ebook edition.]

“Philosophically speaking, anarchism has a strong anti-democratic tradition that, far from seeing anarchism as being democracy carried to its logical conclusion, is actually far closer to being instead aristocracy universalised. Monarchy can be reinvented as a concept to serve a distinctively libertarian ethos, if one can see in the monarch a symbol of sovereignty that is reflected in the absolute sovereignty of the free individual. The word ‘king’ is derived from the word ‘kin’ – so kingship denotes kinship, the king or queen being a symbolic guardian of the people’s freedom and self-determination. Thus handed down generation to generation, the monarch carries the genetic inheritance of the people in a bond of mutual co-inherence.” [Vech, “Anarcho-Monarchism.” Urban Dictionary. October 19th, 2011. Web. Retrieved on August 13th, 2017.]

“If anarchist sociology is concerned with analysing the construction of authority in a variety of different contexts, from a methodological point of view, the relationship between the researcher and the researched must be central. The issues … on instrumental rationality are therefore extremely pertinent to the means and ends of research: what gets studied, who funds it, who benefits from it? And, above all, how is it carried out, and by whom? …

“This chapter has considered the possibility of developing an anarchist sociology and acknowledged some of the theoretical terrain on which it might be formulated or, alternatively, organised in opposition to. I have suggested that some of the founding rationales behind sociology in the nineteenth century, such as instrumental attitudes towards pursuing research in the name of industrial progress and social cohesion, might have negative impact on those being studied and their environment. The fact that sociology can be seen to have often mirrored the hierarchical structures of society in terms of its assumptions about organisation and change, mitigates against interpretations of history that might prioritise alternatives to dominant currents. By examining social movements, for instance, it is often possible to locate the political assumptions of the powerful in the analytical assessment of the phenomena in question. Theories of new social movements, resource mobilisation and political opportunities can all be seen to have overlooked the possibilities that political movement cultures are highly complex and dynamic processes that do not necessarily behave in ways consistent with static or generalised models of protest.”

[Jonathan Purkis, “Towards an anarchist sociology.” Changing anarchism: Anarchist theory and practice in a global age. Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen, editors. Manchester, England, and New York: Manchester University Press. 2004. Pages 39-54.]

“Within … [the] general context of creative ambivalence [among anarchists] about religion, we perceive that religious forms of action and thought are used as a resource for sustaining the involvement of the individual and the group within the movement. Direct action pushes individuals to their physical and psychological limits. Protesters tread a precarious path between positive personal transformation and achievement and serious risk to mental and physical health, or ‘burn-out’. Many employ direct action tactics such as lock-ons, walkways, tunnels and tripods, putting themselves at risk to disrupt and delay construction work (…. Against the background of these disincentives to participation, the motivation to remain involved is often more than a rational, intellectual response to deteriorating environments and the social injustices thus generated; it is also often deeply emotional ….” [Bronislaw Szerszynski and Emma Tomalin, “Enchantment and its uses: religion and spirituality in environmental direct action.” Changing anarchism: Anarchist theory and practice in a global age. Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen, editors. Manchester, England, and New York: Manchester University Press. 2004. Pages 199-212.]

“This chapter suggests that some of the impediments to the acceptability of anarchist ideas lie in often dogmatic, exclusive and fundamentalist approaches to effecting change. This is as true for the use of narrow conceptual categories that juxtapose ‘revolutionary’ strategies against ‘reformist’ ones as it is for unrealistic expectations about what people are capable of doing politically on a daily basis and whether some social groups are more likely to effect change than others. This is relevant both at the level of small-scale projects such as co-operative housing through to strategies for opposing globalisation or militarisation. For anarchist ideals to be either explicitly or implicitly practised, it is necessary to consider the potential for influence in areas other than those which anarchists are naturally prepared to consider. This necessitates a greater flexibility about notions of inclusion and community as well as a preparedness to take part in networks or broad-based coalitions.” [James Bowen, “Moving targets: rethinking anarchist strategies. Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen, editors. Manchester, England, and New York: Manchester University Press. 2004. Pages 117-128.]

“This work suggests that the views of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) provide a useful foundation for the development of such a perspective. To that end, the author provides a synopsis of Kropotkin’s views on social analysis; proffers a rudimentary anarchist analytical framework derived from those views; delineates the most important merits of the proposed framework as a basis for the practice of sociology; and comments on the future of Kropotkian anarchist sociology.…

“… in order for anarchist sociology to optimally combine theory and practice its critique of power and its politicized scholarship need to be embedded in a comprehensive analytical perspective on par with those that currently define our discipline.”

[Gary L. Grizzle, “Anarchist Sociology and the Legacy of Peter Kropotkin.” Theory in Action. Volume 10, number 1, January 2017. Pages 65-87.]

“Now in the last years of the twentieth century, I share this vision [of voluntary cooperation in small, self-governing communities]. Those nineteenth century anarchist thinkers were a century in advance of their contemporaries in warning the peoples of Europe of the consequences of not adopting a regionalist and federalist approach. Among survivors of every kind of disastrous experience in the twentieth century the rulers of the nation states of Europe have directed policy towards several types of supranational existence. The crucial issue that faces them is the question of whether to conceive of a Europe of States or a Europe of Regions.” [Colin Ward. The Anarchist Sociology of Federalism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1992. Page 9.]

“The brilliant flare-up of the very idea of “the social” between between 1840 and 1918 and the discovery sciences it gave form to has remained virtually invisible on the intellectual landscape formed over the last 150 years. Until and unless we uncover that revolution, we will continue to be haunted by the ghosts of Plato, [René] Descartes, [Immanuel] Kant, and God. These ghosts cannot be banished by materialism per se. What is required is a sociological materialism, a cultural materialism. Anarcho-sociology brings together in my worldview the lessons and perspectives of sociology, materialism, communism (Marxism), socialism, and anarchism. It is no simple ideological or political victory I champion but an adaptation, an evolutionary matter of life and death. So long as these ghosts of philosophy and theology haunt us, we will be unable as a species to take advantage of whatever small opportunities are left to us to make something worthwhile flourish on this planet for even a little while. The issues here are that big.” [Sal Restivo. Red, Black, and Objective: Science, Sociology, and Anarchism. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company. Page 181.]

“This paper is a critique of how the state, the legal system, and the criminal justice system function in American society, and calls for an anarchist approach to how society should be organized that will remove the oppressive frameworks we currently live under.

“To support my arguments, I will first provide an overview of how the criminal justice system works. From there I will offer an analysis on why the criminal justice system is flawed, and the racially discriminatory effect it has had on society. I will then discuss why the disproportionate number of minorities found in prison and impoverished in this country is directly tied to the contemporary ruling interests that were preserved by the U.S. Constitution. Showing that the system is inherently discriminatory, I propose an alternative method for viewing society through anarchism. I will spend time debunking myths regarding anarchism and explaining why it is a viable ideology. In the end, I will propose a restorative justice approach to criminal justice that requires neither the state nor the legal system.”

[Coy McKinney. An Anarchist Theory of Criminal Justice. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 3.]

“The initiatives presented in this paper can be recognized as local communities governing the urban commons because they meet the conceptual premises concerning their structure and attributes. Both groups are informal in character and, therefore, do not have hierarchical structures. They bring together citizens who want to be involved on a voluntarily basis. The governance structure can be qualified as flat and the group considered a collective. This form of organization lies beyond the typical structure of markets and hierarchies …. The (re)claimed common-pool resources in these instances are housing services …. They emerged, as described at the beginning of this article, as a response to the intense commodification of goods and services, in a situation when local governments, deep in debt, have stepped aside and attempted to privatize their assets, at the same time commodifying citizens’ standard of living. The two initiatives are also linked because of a demand for introducing the direct democracy principle into local governance, a principle that would enable citizens to take an active part in managing urban places and spaces.…

“… The ‘tent city’ action, as the occupation was called, was registered by the Tenants Movement, however they were soon joined by various other groups including neighborhood residents, students, academics, anarchists, and trade unions representatives.”

[Zofia Łapniewska, “(Re)claiming Space by Urban Commons.” Review of Radical Political Economics. Volume 49, number 1, 2017. Pages 54-66.]

“… what can be meaningfully and constructively taken forward to help inform discussions and debate that are concerned with harnessing a post-neoliberal anarchist future? …

“… Many alternative forms of social co-operation and ways of being not only persist in the contemporary world, but occupy a central place in many household and community livelihood practices. Moreover, many of these practices are empowering and desirable in that they are harnessed through choice, and not economic necessity. It is hoped that this will encourage anarchist-based visions of “post-neoliberal” futures to assert themselves confidently from within these current economic landscapes, and help a secure bridge to be established between the contemporary world and that of a future (“post-neoliberal”) world.

“Fragmented Governance is grounded in a dynamic, pluralist ontology in which there are no ontological or epistemological foundations; thus, all such metanarratives are suspect as social constructions serving to reinforce power dynamics …. The individual is decentered from an authentic self and isolated from human groups; identity is everchanging based on free choice. There is no stable or common ground for developing a coherent social context; therefore, all notions of the good or right are meaningless and representation is impossible. This leaves the Fragmented perspective with no choice but to reject all forms of governance as it represents domination by select groups with no grounds for legitimacy. Therefore, individualist anarchism emerges as the only viable political and economic form—governance by none.…

“Political theory [in integrative governance is] Social anarchism ….

“Considering the notion of public encounters from this Integrative Governance perspective, if ‘reality is in the relating, in the activity-between’ …, the concept of encounter itself focuses on this ‘in-between’ … as a product of dynamic relation. An Integrative Governance structure would likely foster interactions that reflect a relational disposition, a cooperative style of relating, and a participatory mode of association. Drawing from Follett, these characteristics provide the appropriate foundation for successfully using the method of integration. Integration enables constructive conflict through disintegration of a priori positions, collaborative discovery of facts and values, revaluation of desires and methods through dialogue, and creative, integrative determinations. These participatory practices engender a sense of collective responsibility and experientially founded commitment.” [Margaret Stout and Jeannine M. Love, “Integrative Governance: A Method for Fruitful Public Encounters.” American Review of Public Administration. Volume 47, number 1, 2017. Pages 130-147.]

“In this article, I have sought to illustrate the experiences of members of an anarcho-environmentalist group as they grappled with the difficulties of living up to their ideals both within their organization and in everyday life.…

“All environmentalists question the proper relationship between humanity and the natural environment …. The way this question is answered distributes people and organizations along the spectrum of environmental politics, from the reform of state institutions associated with conservationists’ demands to anarcho-environmentalists’ demand for a stateless society that exists in harmony with the natural environment. Those who reject the statism of reformist groups turn their focus to a more personal realm, such as the development of an ‘environmentally friendly’ lifestyle.… This lifestyle addresses issues once taken care of by tradition: it connects individual action with a moral framework and givesmeaning to human existence”

[Nicole Shepherd, “Anarcho-Environmentalists: Ascetics of Late Modernity.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. Volume 31, number 2, April 2002. Pages 135-157.]

“Political action on the cusp between social movements and militancy provides a robust test of universal theories of both collective action and terrorism. In particular, radical environmentalism and the new wave of ecoterrorism in the United States deserve social science consideration as one such radical cusp movement. Data on 84 ecoterrorist events in the United States, 1998-2005, from the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism’s Terrorism Incident Database are considered vis-à-vis previous theories to identify possible patterns. A methodology for research on clandestine organizations, the imputation of cells from incident data, is proposed. Analysis suggests that radicalism is a product of social movements and that it diffuses according to exogenous factors, in particular local political climates. Little support is found for theories of continued radicalization in militant movements, but some evidence indicates that a general life cycle of political violence exists.…

“… if ecoterrorism is purely instrumental, targets would likely be selected as part of ongoing local environmental campaigns. Finally, the view that terrorism is a fulfilling way of life for anarcho-environmentalists implies that there would be little to no pattern in ecoterrorist motivations as they are personal and vary individually.”

[Colin J. Beck, “On the Radical Cusp: Ecoterrorism in the United States, 1998-2005.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly. Volume 12, issue 2, June 2007. Pages 161-176.]

“This essay criticises ‘Leninism.’ It addresses seven points on social change and transformation: change as a broad social movement, and issues of gender, management, authority, the state, the party and the union. It draws on perspectives from various anarchist, syndicalist, feminist, and socialist traditions. It suggests that future socialist movements might well draw on inclusive participatory democratic forms, rather than looking towards reviving some form of a Leninist party.…

“My contention is that although Leninism—as compared to the socialism of the Second International—did re-define ‘politics’ insofar as [Vladimir] Lenin endorsed the construction of a new state, his focus on the state and party neglected ‘economics’ and forces that were already pressing for self-managed socialism in the workplace. In my view, there were large elements of continuity between the Kautskyite and the Leninist conceptions of social-democracy. In each case, change was expected to come through the mechanism of the state. Neither challenged the gendered division of labour; neither prioritised empowering workers in the workplace. The relations and class identities of operatives and managers, family-carers and absent husbands were barely challenged. New states were created, pre-capitalist social features were abolished, new legal rights were legislated, but the work of developing non-patriarchal socialist relations was scarcely begun. Such Marxisms were no model for change in times past. A failure to analyse their limitations is a disservice to the socialism of the present and future.”

[Anthony Zurbrugg, “Socialism and Strategy: A Libertarian Critique of Leninism.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 22, number 1, spring–summer 2014. Pages 16-51.]

“As innovated by French ‘free runners’ David Belle and Sébastien Foucan in the1990s, Parkour is a physical cultural lifestyle of athletic performance focusing on uninterrupted and spectacular gymnastics over, under, around, and through obstacles in urban settings. Through the public practice of Parkour across late modern cities, advocates collectively urge urban pedestrians to reconsider the role of athleticism in fostering self–other environment connections.…

“The physical practice of Parkour is part of a globally burgeoning (sport) counterculture. Although not all of those who practice free running are concerned with the experience of flow, freedom, or the use of urban gymnastics as social critique, a small cluster of 12 traceurs with whom I shared time and space in Toronto approach free running as a vehicle for experiencing flow and, at the same time, challenging dominant social constructions of their urban environment as sanitized corporate space. In this article, I analyze urban traceurs as an innovative ‘anarcho-environmental movement’ … who at once critique the political economic ethos underwriting the design of, and physical cultural movement within, urban cities such as Toronto and who bring forth an aesthetic-spiritual reality of the self through poiesis.”

[Michael Atkinson, “Parkour, Anarcho-Environmentalism, and Poiesis.” Journal of Sport & Social Isssues. Volume 33, number 2, May 2009. Pages 169-194.]

“… the Marxist-derived Left was defeated, while social democracy reconciled to the neoliberal framework. ‘Anarcho-liberalism’ sauntered in a weird middle ground between both camps. Its representatives had the modest ambitions of the social liberals of the center Left, but the flair for the dramatic associated with the most militant anarchists of the far Left. Take the talented Naomi Klein, the archetypical ‘anarcho-liberal.’ At a panel hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society, Klein critiqued Milton Friedman on the peculiarly reactionary grounds that he was a ‘Utopian ideologue,’ mentioning that she didn’t think that there was any great need for ‘grand projects of human freedom.’ This is consistent with past statements to the effect that she wasn’t ‘a utopian thinker.’ She continued, ‘I don’t imagine my ideal society. I don’t really like to read those books, either. I’m just much more comfortable talking about things that are.’” [Bhaskar Sunkara, “The ‘Anarcho-Liberal.’” Dissent. Online magazine. September 27th, 2011.]

“‘If you listen to a Lack Of Knowledge record, even the ones that were on the Crass label, you’ll soon discover that we were not trying to be anything that we weren’t,’ elaborates guitarist Tony Barber. ‘Most people’s idea of anarcho-punk is to do with haircuts, clothing and how fast the music is, or how aggressive the lyrics can be… the thing is, we already existed before anarcho-punk came along, and we only ended up on Crass because we met them before they’d even started their own label, and when we put out our own single, we gave them a copy. But this whole idea of having some sort of template for being anarcho-punk? It’s no different really to being a ‘teddy boy’ or a mod! It’s almost the opposite of what it’s actually meant to represent. And for us to sit here and say we were an anarcho-punk group – just for us to even label ourselves as such in fact – would be a complete paradox. We never sounded anything like an anarcho-punk group, and that’s probably the one reason why we were one – because we never tailored our sound to fit an imaginary mould.’” [Ian Glasper. The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk, 1980?1984. Oakland, California: PM Press. 2014. Page 39.]

“The anarcho-punk scene held animal rights as a central theme, so those accounts of punk that get beyond 1979 do frequently mention veganism and animal rights, but even here it is often as a brief mention within a list of other political engagements.…

“… Among the numerous anarcho-punk bands to embrace animal rights and veganism in the 1980s, Conflict stood as a totem. To supplement their lyrical exhortations they projected video footage, obtained by the band themselves by infiltrating abattoirs, onto screens behind the stage as they performed.…

“Politicisation through punk typically involves an awareness of animal liberation. Since the growth of anarcho-punk in the late 1970s and early 1980s, bands would often ‘include in their records information and images of the horrors of animal use and abuse.’”

[Len Tilbürger and Chris P. Kale. ‘Nailing Descartes to the Wall’: animal rights, veganism and punk culture. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2014. Pages 5-9.]

“As odd as it may be to talk about metaphysic as the basis for anarchist thought, it may be odder still (at least to some political observers) that one should talk about anarchism at all. Long regarded as a dated, if not irrelevant, school of political thought, anarchism nevertheless has undergone yet another revival in the last decade or so. From anarcho-punk bands putting out ‘noise music’ to bands of young people sporting black attire and the circle-A, its cultural symbols are widely present. More importantly, self-identified ‘anarchists’ have often taken center stage at protests directed at such institutions as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Organization of American States.” [Leonard Williams, “Anarchism Revived.” New Political Science. Volume 29, number 3, September 2007. Pages 297-312.]

“A contemporaneous punk offshoot – street punk or Oi! – was singled out for particular criticism by participants within the anarcho- punk movement. While both scenes arose through the sense of disappointment which was felt by participants that the radical vows of early punks had been left unfulfilled, the relationship between them was often convoluted. Although some bands, particularly Oi Polloi, called for unity between factions, the discourse was often one of division. An additional punk offshoot both targeted by and targeting the anarcho-punk movement was the hardcore scene. While crossovers occur, such as the controversial Admit You’re Shit; other bands, such as The Exploited and Discharge, who also integrated anarchist rhetoric in their lyrics, overtly engaged in a dispute over authenticity and what they saw as a more ‘real’ interpretation of a true punk ideology.…

“In a similar fashion to the anarcho-punk movement, Oi! emerged out of disappointment with what punk was becoming – if at its emergence punk had claimed to be the angry voice of kids of the streets it was being taken over (arguably from the very start) by middle-class art school people. Oi! claimed to be the ‘real punk,’ reviving the working class background of the original subculture (although not all of its participants were indeed working class). Even though both Oi! and the anarcho-punk movement emerged with similar purposes – reviving the authentic punk promise – their relationship was far from cordial.”

[Ana Raposo, “Rival Tribal Rebel Revel: The Anarcho Punk Movement and Subcultural Internecine Rivalries.” The Aesthetic of Our Anger: Anarcho-Punk, Politics and Music. Mike Dines and Matthew Worley, editors. Brooklyn, New York: Minor Compositions imprint of Autonomedia. 2016. Creative Commons. Pages 67-89.]

“Speculative anarchism asserts not only that the decision as to who counts in any world is radically contingent and the site of a struggle for hegemony, but that the very laws of presentation could change at any moment and for no reason whatsoever. It affirms as well that the truth of justice as equality, that 1=1, i.e., that any being is absolutely equal to any other, is a truth absolutely indifferent to its existence in thought. Furthermore, the truth of justice as equality is a speculative truth that continues to exist independently of its contingent manifestation in the world. But because this truth is contingent (we cannot assert dogmatically, but only speculatively, the independence of this truth from its presentation within our world) it requires a decision, a political decision, to unfold the consequences of justice as equality in the aftermath of events such as the French and Haitian Revolutions that have presented this eternal calculus in a concrete, though incomplete and apparently failed political sequence. In other words, when confronted with the spectacle of the Jacobin Terror or the so-called failure of Haitian independence, a speculative anarchism would continue to affirm that regarding the truth of justice as equality first manifest in these sequences, regarding their actual success or failure, it is simply too early to tell ….” [Nick Nesbitt, “Beyond Empire’s Dialectics of (Colonial) Sovereignty: Speculative Anarchism and the Critique of Critique.” Theory & Event. Volume 18, number 4, October 2015. Pagination unknown.]

“We do not argue that [Friedrich] Hayek was, in fact, an anarchist. In fact, he expressly denied the position. Our argument, instead, is that understanding the internal logic of Hayek’s economic and legal systems compel the conclusion that Hayek should have embraced anarchism. And although it may seem inconceivable that Hayekian reasoning could lead to the conclusion that Hayek should have been an anarchist, it is worth noting that Hayek himself did not shy from the logical implications of his reasoning even when that logic led to some fairly radical conclusions. For example, Hayek … abandoned his earlier belief that government abuse of the monetary system could be contained and instead called for a system of competing currencies, what he called the denationalization of money.” [Edward Peter Stringham and Todd J. Zywicki, “Hayekian anarchism.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. Volume 78, issue 3, May 2011. Pages 290-301.]

“The irony of spirituality in contemporary society is that ad agencies and corporations have taken advantage of the need for meaning in individual’s lives and the fact that our disconnection from the natural world and each other has caused a ‘spiritual’ emptiness. Capitalism exploits this emptiness as a way to encourage people to consume more and to fill that void. We have established a society of consumerism, a consuming civilization where money and things have become our religion. Ecospirituality becomes engagement and a way to build communities that has a foundation of sustainability. It shifts our thinking from a pedagogy of death through ecocide to a pedagogy of life. This will lead into the conclusions and what I call an anarchist psychotherapy.” [Daniel Rhodes. An Anarchist Psychotherapy: Ecopsychology and a Pedagogy of Life. Ph.D. dissertation. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Greensboro, North Carolina. 2008. Page 34.]

“Let us bring closer together the doctrine of Buddhism with that of Christianity. The young prince Sidharta, or Buddha, who was born 482 before our era, has an inclination for solitude and surpasses his instructors in wisdom, as Jesus did in his twelfth year. Buddha goes into the desert, and Jesus also. Neither Buddha nor Jesus have great appetite in the desert. Buddha is tried by the demon Papayan, Jesus by the devil Arrhiman. Buddha had precursors; Jesus had Moses, Elias, etc. Buddha had disciples; Jesus had first five, and later a dozen. Buddha had no home, no family, no fortune, just like Jesus. Both were physicians, saviours and messiahs. Buddha went down into the lower regions to fight with the devil Totgour, with whom he is still fighting to-day, according to the Chinese belief. Jesus has done the same to save some ‘souls’ from hell. Buddha was a communist and anarchist, and Jesus denied his family to live in community with his disciples. Both the Jew of Nazareth and Buddha have had no great pleasure with their communists. Both were anarchists because they did not acknowledge the existing laws.” [Prof. Dr. Bauer, H. F. Herbert, and a great number of scientists. The Freethinkers’ Manual: Containing the Description of the Seat and the Nature of the Human and Animal Soul; an Explanation of Thought, Dream, Death and Life; the Illumination of the Brain, the Fecundation of the Storage Batteries of the Human and Animal Body, an Explanation of Fever and Disease, etc., etc. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Radical Publishing Company. 1902. Page 12.]

“I do not understand by a discussion on Freethought an attack on orthodox Christianity;—the emancipated intelligence of our age ought to have advanced in the consciousness of its own strength far beyond such attacks; its mission is rather to teach than to quarrel?to create rather than to destroy. I shall assume, therefore, that the majority of my audience are freethinkers—that they do not accept Christianity as a divine or miraculous revelation; and I would ask all, who holding other views may chance to be here to-night, to accept for a time our assumption, to follow us whither it leads, and to mark its results. For only by such sympathy can they discover the ultimate truth or falsehood of our relative standpoints; only such sympathy distinguishes the thinker from the bigot.” [Karl Pearson. The Ethic of Freethought: A Selection of Essays and Lectures. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1888. Page 14.]

“Freethought is … like a skilful physician, whose function it is to expel disease and leave the patient sound and well. No sick man claims that the doctor shall supply him with something in place of his malady. It is enough that the enemy of his health is driven out. He is then in a position to act for himself. He has legs to walk with, a brain to devise, and hands to execute his will. What more does he need? What more can he ask without declaring himself a weakling or a fool? So it is with superstition, the deadliest disease of the mind. Freethought casts it out, with its blindness and its terrors, and leaves the mind clear and free. All nature is then before us to study and enjoy. Truth shines on us with celestial light, Goodness smiles on our best endeavors, and Beauty thrills our senses and kindles our imagination with the subtle magic of her charms.” [G. W. Foote. Arrows of Freethought. London: H. A. Kemp. 1882. Page 17.]

“Here was a society [the Paris Salon], a truly anarchistic society, where only beauty and genius reigned, flourishing in the very heart of despotism and doing more than anything else to overthrow all authority. Here was wit and wisdom, philosophy and poetry, all the graces and all the arts; here was courtesy, fashion, nobility, culture, learning, elegance, and wealth. It was like a fairy world indeed, where life was simply luxury, yet a fairy world of splendor and joy on the very bosom of a volcano; itself, in fact, creating that volcano, its very atmosphere of de light and refinement being the electric force to make lurid and destructive the after years. Yet they knew it not, careless and unconscious, rich and favored beings; Free thinkers, but Freethinkers simply for the intense pleasure of mental liberty, criticising and overthrowing beliefs, doubting, questioning, searching; laughing philosophers, to whom the gods were only sport and play. Little did the inhabitants of this brilliant world realize what thunder bolts they were forging, that they were setting the world to thinking as never before, that they were destroying the very foundations of their own social prestige. They imagined, perhaps, it was all among themselves that these thoughts flashed. They did not know that these thoughts went far beyond into a million minds, to flame eventually in lightning splendor. The Paris Salon unconsciously points the index finger to the French Revolution. In it is the making of the French Revolution. We might say that without the salon there would have been no Revolution; at least, the Revolution would not have contained the vast intellectual power that it did.” [Samuel P. Putnam. 400 Years of Freethought. New York: The Truth Seeker Company. 1894. Pages 277-278.]

“The expression ‘free thought’ is often used as if it meant merely opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy. But this is only a symptom of free thought, frequent, but invariable. ‘Free thought’ means thinking freely—as freely, at least, as is possible for a human being. The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the free thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things: the force of tradition, and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a man’s emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker. A man is not to be denied this title because he happens, on some point, to agree with the theologians of his country. An Arab who, starting from the first principles of human reason, is able to deduce that the Koran was not created, but existed eternally in heaven, may be counted as a free thinker, provided he is willing to listen to counter arguments and subject his ratiocination to critical scrutiny. On the same conditions, a European who, from a definition of benevolence, is able to show that a benevolent Deity will subject infants to an eternity of torment if they die before some one sprinkles them with water to the accompaniment of certain magical words, wil have to be regarded as satisfying our definition. What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.” [Bertrand Russell. The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chain of Mental Slavery. Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Publications. 1944. Page 3.]

“It was a long and lively drive. Angelo was a Methodist, Luigi was a Freethinker. The Judge was very proud of his Freethinkers’ Society, which was flourishing along in a most prosperous way and already had two members — himself and the obscure and neglected Pudd’nhead Wilson. It was to meet that evening, and he invited Luigi to join; a thing which Luigi was glad to do, partly because it would please himself, and partly because it would gravel Angelo.” [Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins. New York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers. 1899. Page 259.]

“… regardless of how we label Mark Twain’s religious attitudes, he was clearly a freethinker, although the freedom of his thought comes with a price: a large and unacknowledged debt to Robert Ingersoll, the most noted freethinker of his—and Mark Twain’s—time. Robert Ingersoll deserves overdue payment through fuller scholarly recognition of his great influence on Mark Twain’s late writings.” [John Bird, “The Mark Twain and Robert Ingersoll Connection: Freethought, Borrowed Thought, Stolen Thought.” The Mark Twain Annual. Volume 11, number 1, 2013. Pages 42-61.]

“Although [Robert] Ingersoll’s influence on [Samuel L.] Clemens [Mark Twain] should not be exaggerated, it must be acknowledged. A definitive statement of Clemens’ religious ideas is difficult to formulate, given the changes which his faith underwent, his heterodox sources of faith and doubt, his lifelong capacity for dissembling beliefs which he did not possess, and for overstating both doubts and beliefs. It is possible, nonetheless, to assert that his combined statements on religion reflect his affinity for Ingersoll’s freethought philosophy.” [Thomas D. Schwartz, “Mark Twain and Robert Ingersoll: The Freethought Connection.” American Literature. Volume 48, number 2, May 1976. Pages 183-193.]

“The key to [Bruno] Bauer’s argument is the particularity of religion.𔆤 [I]n his biblical studies Bauer had developed the argument that religion involves the claim to the universal by a specific and particular group. As a result it becomes brutal and oppressive, and in the name of this universal religion will not tolerate others. So emancipation and toleration are not possible when religion dominates political and civic life.

“This means that a prejudiced Christian state such as the one in Germany will never grant freedom to Jews. It is just as much a Jewish problem as a Christian one: Christians may be a step closer to freedom than the Jews, but as long as they are defined by their religion, they are incapable of receiving freedom. The problem is that the opposition between Jews and Christians is at heart a religious one and therefore as resilient as stone. So the only way forward is to dispense with religion, for then the opposition itself falls away.”

[Roland Boer, “Friends, Radical and Estranged: Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx.” Religion & Theology. Volume 17, number 3/4, 2010. Pages 358-401.]

“The movement that I’m in favor of is a movement of libertarians who do not substitute whim for reason. Now some of them do, obviously, and I’m against that. I’m in favor of reason over whim. As far as I’m concerned, and I think the rest of the movement. too, we are anarcho-capitalists. In other words, we believe that capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatable, but you can’t really have one wrthout the other. True anarchism will be capltalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism.…

“Also, we have a long-range problem which none of us has ever really grappled with to any extent. That is, how do we finally establish a libertarian society? Obviously ideas are a key thing. First off you have to persuade a lot of people to be anarchists – anarcho-capitalists. But then what? What is the next step? You certainly don’t have to convince the majority of the public, because most of the public will follow anything that happens. You obviously have to have a large minority. How do we then implement this? This is the power problem. As I’ve expressed this in other places, the government is not going to resign.”

[Murray Rothbard, “Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard.” The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Review. Volume 1, number 2, February 1972. Pages 1-S–4-S.]

“Left-wing anarchists … will oppose equally government and private organizations such as corporations on the ground that each is equally ‘elitist’ and ‘coercive.’ But the ‘rightist’ libertarian is not opposed to inequality, and his concept of ‘coercion’ applies only to the use of violence. The libertarian sees a crucial distinction between government, whether central, state, or local, and all other institutions in society.” [Murray Rothbard. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. Second edition. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2006. Page 57.]

“Consider, for example, a philosophical anarchist who opposes all taxation fervently. Suppose that his subjective sacrifice in the payment of any tax is so great as to be almost infinite. In that case, the minimum-sacrifice principle would have to exempt the anarchist from taxation, while the equal-sacrifice principle could tax him only an infinitesimal amount. Practically, then, the sacrifice principle would have to exempt the anarchist from taxation. Furthermore, how can the government determine the subjective sacrifice of the individual? By asking him? In that case, how many people would refrain from proclaiming the enormity of their sacrifice and thus escape payment completely?” [Murray Rothbard. Power & Market: Government and the Economy. Fourth edition. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2006. Page 188.]

“The laissez-faireist … assumes that there must be a single compulsory monopoly of coercion and decision-making in society, that there must, for example, be one Supreme Court to hand down final and unquestioned decisions. But he fails to recognize that the world has lived quite well throughout its existence without a single, ultimate decision-maker over its whole inhabited surface. The Argentinian, for example, lives in a state of ‘anarchy,’ of nongovernment, in relation to the citizen of Uruguay—or of Ceylon. And yet the private citizens of these and other countries live and trade together without getting into insoluble legal conflicts, despite the absence of a common governmental ruler.” [Murray Rothbard. Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles with Power and Market: Government and the Economy. Scholar’s edition. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2001. Page 1050.]

“A proponent of limited government might object to [Murray] Rothbard’s argument … along the following lines: ‘Yes, the “worst” that could happen following an anarchist experiment is that the State would re-emerge, but it might be a far worse State than what we have now.’” [Robert P. Murphy. Study Guide to Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles with Power and Market: Government and the Economy. Scholar’s edition. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2006. Page 178.]

“I have described how a private system of courts and police might function, but not the laws it would produce and enforce; I have discussed institutions, not results. That is why I have used the term anarcho-capitalist, which describes the institutions, rather than libertarian. Whether these institutions will produce a libertarian society—a society in which each person is free to do as he likes with himself and his property as long as he does not use either to initiate force against others—remains to be proven.

“Under some circumstances they will not. If almost everyone believes strongly that heroin addiction is so horrible that it should not be permitted anywhere under any circumstances, anarcho-capitalist institutions will produce laws against heroin. Laws are being produced for a market, and that is what the market wants.”

[David Friedman. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. Chicago, Illinois: Open Court Publishing. 1989. Ebook edition. Or: North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. 2015. Ebook edition.]

“… [One] school can be labeled ‘anarcho-capitalist’ or ‘private property anarchist.’ In its extreme form this school would advocate eliminating all forms of collective action since all functions of government can he replaced by individuals possessing private rights exchangeable in the market place. Under this system all transactions would be voluntary except insofar as the protection of individual rights and enforcement of contracts required coercion. The essential question facing this school is how can law and order, which do require some coercion, he supplied without ultimately resulting in one provider of those services holding a monopoly on coercion, i.e., government. If a dominant protective firm or association emerges after exchanges take place, we will have the minimal state as defined by Nozick and will have lapsed back into the world of the ‘constitutionalist.’ …

“Hence, the anarcho-capitalists place faith in the profit seeking entrepreneurs to find the optimal size and type of protective services and faith in competition to prevent the establishment of a monopoly in the provision of these services.”

[Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill, “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West.” The Journal of Libertarian Studies. Volume 3, number 1, 1979. Pages 9-29.]

“‘Anarcho’-capitalism has for decades occupied a small but significant position within ‘business ethics,’ while the anarchism associated with the larger traditions of workers and social movements has only had a spectral presence. Social anarchisms’ forms of opposition and proposed alternatives to standard liberal business practices, identities and presuppositions have appeared only fleetingly in mainstream business ethics. In the light of these anarchist hauntings, this paper identifies and explores social anarchism’s critique of dominant forms of business ethics, and business practice.…

“Anarchism disrupts and alarms current practices, with possibilities of alternative futures. It points to suppressed past and present contradictions ….”

[Benjamin Franks, “Anarchism and business ethics: the social responsibility of the anarchist is to destroy business.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, November 2014. Pages 699-724.]

“There will surely always but greater individualism does seem to be something these days. If so, it would be something that anarchocapitalists would applaud. We would like conformity to be old-fashioned.” [John J. Ray, “Authoritarianism, Racism, and Anarchocapitalism: A Rejoinder to Eckhardt.” Political Psychology. Volume 9, number 4, December 1988. Pages 693-699.]

“Is coercive government necessary? Private-property anarchism—also known as anarchist libertarianism, individualist anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism—is a political philosophy and set of economic arguments that says that just as markets provide bread, so too should markets provide law. If someone argued that because food is so important it must be supplied by government, most would respond that government provision of food would be a disaster. Private-property anarchism applies the same logic to law and argues that because protecting property rights is so important, it is the last thing that should be left to the state. Under private-property anarchy, individual rights and market forces would reign supreme; there would just be no state. Security would be provided privately as it is at colleges, shopping malls, hotels. and casinos, and courts would be provided privately, as they are with arbitration and mediation today.” [Edward P. Stringham, “Introduction.” Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice. Edward P. Stringham, editor. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. 2011. Pages 1-17.]

“Ed Stringham’s edited volume, Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice, is among the latest examples of this important trend in political economy. It combines both ‘old-style’ normative and ‘new-style’ positive analyses of private order to consider the case for anarchy. Stringham’s book is concerned with examining a particular kind of anarchy, sometimes called ‘private property anarchy,’, but more commonly referred to by its advocates as ‘anarcho-capitalism.’” [Peter T. Leeson, “Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice.” Review article. Public Choice. Volume 133, 2007. Pages 253-256.]

“The concept of law as an order of persons is analysed in the body of the paper. I start with a discussion of the distinction between orders of natural and orders of artificial persons. Then, I give an admittedly partial analysis of the notion of law as an order of persons. The analysis is presented as a formal axiomatic theory. To that theory I add the notion of a natural person as well as the postulates that we need for a description of natural law as an order of natural persons. In the last two sections, I discuss various ways in which the theory of natural law can be linked to descriptions of human affairs and contrast the anarchocapitalists’ view of the order of the human world with the alternatives that have come to dominate political and social thought.” [Frank Van Dun, “Natural Law. A Logical Analysis.” Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics. Volume 2, 2003. Pages 1-29.]

“This is the most obvious criticism, and the most likely to arise. It, perhaps correctly, identifies anarchocapitalism as at variance with what has traditionally been considered ‘the anarchist position.’ Such a historical definition is presented in opposition to a dictionary definition that anarcho-capitalists may use that anarchism is ‘a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty’ or ‘The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished’ or ‘The belief that all existing governmental authority should be abolished and replaced by free cooperation among individuals’ (Dictionary.com). Anarchist opponents to the suggestion of allowing anarcho-capitalists into the fold hold that these definitions are insufficient precisely because they do not include the forms of organization that post-state society is to take. Specifically, these definitions make no references to the proposals that anarchists have made historically as to how a stateless society should be arranged.” [Richard Garner. Anarchism and Anarcho-Capitalism. London: Libertarian Alliance. 2011. Page 2.]

“I believe in capitalism. But, aside from my meagre savings, I am not ‘a capitalist,’ merely one of capitalism’s many fortunate hirelings. To be a capitalist means to possess and control an abundance of capital rather than to hold any definite opinions about how capitalists ought to behave, or be made to behave. Capitalists invest much time, money and effort learning the particular circumstances of their trade, and if these circumstances change dramatically, whether towards anarcho-capitalism or in any other direction, a lot of this investment will be wasted. Most capitalists are therefore strongly in favour of existing state repressions, hardly any oppose state repression on principle, and none do so out of straightforward self interest, except insofar as, like me, they specialise in the trade of anarcho-capitalism. (Other capitalists specialise in the trade of anti-capitalism.)” [Brian Micklethwait. Anarchy Versus Anarcho-Capitalism. London: Libertarian Alliance. 1981. Page 1.]

“We now have a great number of micro-states, and our ‘anarchists’ are obviously statists of the usual kind, albeit writ small. They assert their powers of subjugation or expulsion over anyone they find within their territory. We can foresee at least two problems with this state of affairs. Firstly, that anarcho-capitalists are in practice bound to seek out and adopt initial conventions of property delineation upon which all agree, so that our island must be populated by only those anarcho-capitalists who accede to a single theory of acquisition of real estate, and jurisdiction therein (but then, there would of course be. no political problems anyway, if everyone agreed on identical solutions). Secondly, we are back to square one anyway, trying to predict how nation-states might (or might not) negotiate travel, trade and conflictresolution arrangements. Thirdly, if present states are viewed as land-holding companies, it is hard to see what quarrel anarcho-capitalists can have with their governments’ actions, except to desire to abrogate the underlying extant land titles for their own (and perhaps others’) benefit, a song they can sing in the company of socialists, anarchist and otherwise.” [Tony Hollick, “Impossibility of anarcho-capitalism.” The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance. Volume 2, number 2, spring 1981. Pages 1-2.]

“Without law based on objectively defined natural rights, no society can oppose the will to power of rogue tyrants, because one subjective ideology is no more meritorious than another. In the same way, no verdict issued from a private, business-interested court can have more weight than any other. Only disinterested, objective law removed from the realm of whim—the market— can provide an adequate mechanism of justice. Under the anarchocapitalist system, this is impossible.” [Jordan Schneider, “Contra Anarcho-Capitalism.” Journal of Libertarian Studies. Volume 21, number 1, spring 2007. Pages 101-110.]

“An excellent example of a network industry is the very free market in defense services that anarcho-capitalists favor. In consequence, anarcho-capitalists are sorely mistaken about the consequences of their ideas if tried.…

“In a network industry, decentralized provision runs two risks. The best-known is product convergence that locks in a sub-optimal standard …. A potentially more destructive problem, though, is proliferation of incompatible products. It would be a serious drawback if a phone produced by one firm could not interface with a competitor’s phone, to take a mundane example. Similarly, in an anarcho-capitalist defense services market, it would be disastrous if firms’ products were ‘incompatible’; that is, if competing suppliers shared no procedures for resolving disputes between their respective clients.”

[Bryan Caplan and Edward Stringham, “Networks, Law, and the Paradox of Cooperation.” The Review of Austrian Economics. Volume 16, number 4, 2003. Pages 309-326.]

“Many anarchist of various stripes have made the claim that anarcho-capitalists aren’t really anarchists because anarchism entails anti-capitalism. I happen to think this is actually backwards. If they genuinely wish to eliminate the state, they are anarchists, but they aren’t really capitalists, no matter how much they want to claim they are.

“People calling themselves ‘anarcho-capitalists’ usually want to define ‘capitalism’ as the same thing as a free market, and ‘socialism’ as state intervention against such. But what then is a free market? If you mean simply all voluntary transactions that occur with-out state interference, then it’s a circular and redundant definition. In that case, all anarchists are ‘anarcho-capitalists,’ even the most die-hard anarcho-syndicalist.”

[Anna O. Morgenstern. Anarcho-‘Capitalism’ is Impossible. Three Theses on Laissez-Faire Socialism. Auburn, Alabama: Alliance of the Libertarian Left Distro. 2014. Page 1.]

“… if anarcho-capitalism is at best one of the illegitimate progeny of classical liberalism, it is still true that its basic principles are to be found in some of the theories which were produced by the rise of capitalism. But then, one can understand why, during the transition to capitalism, the theorists of the new order should have seen government by precapitalist vested interests as incompatible with entrepreneurial freedom and the unfettered market. It was necessary, under those particular historical conditions, to keep state interference with the affairs of individual entrepreneurs at a minimum.” [Derek Browne, “Anarchism and Private Property.” Radical Philosophy: Philosophical Journal of the Independent Left. Number 24, spring 1980. Pages 12-19.]

“Because ‘anarcho’ capitalists use the market as their sole gauge of good and bad, they are, in effect, unable to make effective moral judgments! This percolates into all of their thinking — they revere wealthy entrepreneurs as examples of virtue, basing this solely on their quantitative ethic. If this ethic holds true, then, in the US, Bill Gates must be the most virtuous person in human history! General Motors must be the most virtuous of corporations! This is clearly untrue, therefore: Merit (e.g., good and bad) cannot be ascertained in quantitative economic terms.” [Daibhidh. Anarcho-Hucksters: There is Nothing Anarchistic about Capitalism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 4.]

“The above title [‘Jesus Is an Anarchist: A Free-Market, Libertarian Anarchist, That Is—Otherwise What Is Called an Anarcho-Capitalist’] may seem like strong words, for surely that can’t be correct? Jesus an anarchist? One must be joking, right?

“But you read correctly, and I will demonstrate exactly that. At this point you may be incredulous, but I assure you that I am quite serious. If you are a Christian and find the above title at all hard to believe then you of all people owe it to yourself to find out what the basis of this charge is, for if the above comes as news to you then you still have much to learn about Jesus and about the most vitally important struggle which has plagued mankind since the dawn of history: mankind’s continuing struggle between freedom and slavery, between value producers and the violent parasitical elite, between peace and war, between truth and deception.

“This is the central struggle which defines mankind’s history and, sadly, continues to do so. As Christians and as people in general, what we choose to believe and accept as the truth is equally as vitally important, for ultimately it is people’s beliefs about the world that will shape and determine what outcomes transpire in the world. If the mass of people believe in political falsehoods and deceptions then mankind will continue to repeat the same gruesome mistakes, as it does presently, and the aforementioned struggle will continue to be no closer to a desirable resolution. Genuine change must first come by changing one’s mind, and if what one had believed before was in error then one cannot coherently expect good results to proceed forth from it. And all change starts with the individual.”

[James Redford, “Jesus Is an Anarchist: A Free-Market, Libertarian Anarchist, That Is—Otherwise What Is Called an Anarcho-Capitalist.” Privately published. June 1st, 2006. Pages 1-61. Retrieved on February 28th, 2017.]

“If man is naturally individualistic, however, why did he lose his basic freedoms as soon as settled agriculture became the predominant mode of production? The answer to this question may be stated simply. Hunter-gatherer societies were free primarily because each individual possessed effective economic mobility. In the face of attempted political or economic exploitation, the hunter-gatherer always had the opportunity to pick up and move without paying a significant price for doing so. If a militarily stronger band attempted to force tribute from a weaker band, the weaker band could simply change locations without incurring any substantial sacrifice.” [Thomas Mayor, “Hunter-Gatherers: The Original Libertarians.” The Independent Review. Volume 16, number 4, spring 2012. Pages 495-500.]

“It is commonly held that libertarianism is a liberal view. Also, many who affirm classical liberalism call themselves libertarians and vice versa. I argue that libertarianism’s resemblance to liberalism is superficial; in the end, libertarians reject essential liberal institutions. Correctly understood, libertarianism resembles a view that liberalism historically defined itself against, the doctrine of private political power that underlies feudalism. Like feudalism, libertarianism conceives of justified political power as based in a network of private contracts. It rejects the idea, essential to liberalism, that political power is a public power, to be be impartially exercised for the common good.” [Samuel Freeman, “Illiberal Libertarians: Why Libertarianism Is Not a Liberal View.” Philosophy & Public Affairs. Volume 30, number 2, spring 2001. Pages 105-151.]

“If we are to have any chance of victory, we must discard the defective cultural framework of libertarianism. I call my suggested replacement, with its ethically-based cultural principles, ‘paleolibertarianism’: the old libertarianism.

“I use the term as conservatives use paleoconservatism: not as a new creed, but as a harking back to their roots which also distinguishes them from the neocons. We have no parallel to the necons, but it is just as urgent for us to distinguish libertarianism from libertinism.

“Briefly, paleolibertarianism, with its roots deep in the Old Right, sees:

[Llewelyn H. Rockwell, Jr., “Manifesto: The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism.” Liberty Magazine. Volume 3, number 3, January 1990. Pages 34-38.]

“Libertarians are now split into paleos and modals. The Libertarian Party, now irrelevant and inexorably Modal-dominated, is History. It is finished, over, kaput. It is vanishing into the dustbin of history. For those good people still devoted to, or trapped in, the LP [Libertarian Party], it is time to realize that the LP has accomplished its historic task-to develop libertarianism and to win public recognition of the doctrine and its time is long over. To paraphrase Nathaniel Branden’s farewell to Ayn Rand, it is time to say to the LP: ‘Thank you … and goodbye!’ with the emphasis on the final word. For sensible people and paleo-libertarians, the time has come to re-enter the real world, and to help forge a coalition that will create a successful right-wing populist movement which will, by necessity, be in large part libertarian.…

“… What we need to build a new paleo movement, particularly at this stage, is a presidential candidate, someone whom all wings of anti-Establishment rightists can get behind, with enthusiasm. And while Howard Phillips’ Taxpayers Party may eventually play an important role, at this point we can simply say that the Taxpayer Party has not yet been fully formed and that right now he has no presidential candidate. The arena of action now is to find someone to lead a people’s revolution against the crumbling George Bush in the New Hampshire and other Republican presidential primaries and to take that fight on to the Republican convention, hoping at most to win in ’[19]92, and at the least to build a powerful movement for ‘[19]96, and beyond.”

[Murray N. Rothbard, “Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement.” Rothbard Rockwell Report. Volume 2, number 1, January 1992. Pages 5-14.]

“His [Rudolf Steiner’s] blueprint for social Utopia was the threefold social order, whereby three independent systems of collective life (economy, state, and arts and sciences) are conceived to function as a harmonious whole.…

“It is time that radical political economics receives anew its lost anarchist tradition and that the old Marxian enmities be forgotten and buried for the sake of uniting intellectual and vital forces for the challenges that lie ahead, challenges that do not appear few and minor.…

“Improbable revolutionary, and a figure seldom classed among the disquieting ‘anarchists,’ Steiner is generally associated with metaphysical investigation and imaginative pedagogy: a quiet thinker working in the shadow of enlightened magnates. He had been indeed the spiritual teacher of Elisa von Moltke and her husband, Helmuth, the chief of Germany’s general staff, the general who lost Germany on the river Marne (in August 1914). In spite of such elitist connections, Steiner’s social thinking remained indisputably grounded in the principles of anarchism.…

“A reflection on the economics of Rudolf Steiner is presented here as an invitation to draw from a diverse source of ideas in dire need of elaboration. From such ideas, it is to be hoped that a comprehensive plan of reconstruction will be erected on the rubble and ashes of a system that, as Steiner and many others, anarchists or otherwise, foresaw several generations ago, is running maddeningly toward self-annihilation.”

[Guido Giacomo Preparata, “Perishable Money in a Threefold Commonwealth: Rudolf Steiner and the Social Economics of an Anarchist Utopia.” Review of Radical Political Economics. Volume 38, number 4, fall 2006. Pages 619-648.]

“… [There is] a threefold division of the body social.…

“One of these three divisions is the economic life. It is the best one to begin with here, because it has obviously, through modern technical industry and modern capitalism, worked its way into the whole structure of human society, to the subordination of everything else. This economic life requires to form an independent organic branch by itself within the body social,—relatively as independent as the nervous and sensory system within the human body. Its concern is with everything in the nature of production of commodities, circulation of commodities, consumption of commodities.

“Next comes the life of public right,—political life in the proper sense. This must be recognised as forming a second branch of the body social. To this branch belongs what one might term the true life of the State,—taking ‘State’ in the sense in which it was formerly applied to a community possessing common rights.

“Whilst economic life is concerned with all that a man needs from Nature and what he himself produces from nature,—with commodities and the circulation and consumption of commodities,—the second branch of the body social can have no other concern than what is involved in purely human relations, in that which comes up from the deep-recesses of the inner life and affects man’s relation towards man. It is essential to a right understanding of the composition of the social organism, that one should clearly recognise the difference between the system of ‘public right’ which can only deal from inner and purely human grounds with man-to-man relations, and the economic system, which is concerned solely with the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. People must become possessed of an instinctive sense for distinguishing between these two in life, so that in practice the economic life and the life of ‘right’ will be kept distinct;—just as, in man’s natural organism, the lungs’ function in working up the outer air keeps distinct from the processes going on in the nervous and sensory life.

“As the third division, alongside the other two and equally independent, are to be understood all those things in the social organism which are connected with mental and spiritual life. The term ‘spiritual culture,’ or ‘everything that is connected with mental and spiritual life,’ is scarcely a term that accurately describes it in any way. Perhaps one might more accurately express it as ‘Everything that rests on the natural endowments of each single human being—everything that plays a part in the body social on the ground of the natural endowments, both spiritual and physical, of the individual.’

“The first function,—the economic one, — has to do with everything that must exist in order that man may keep straight in his material adjustments to the world around him. The second function has to do with whatever must exist in the body social because of men’s personal relations to one another. The third function has to do with all that must spring from the personal individuality of each human being, and must be incorporated as personal individuality in the body social.”

[Rudolf Steiner. The Threefold Commonwealth. E. Bowen-Wedgwood, authorized translator. New York: The Threefold Commonwealth Publishing Association. 1922. Pages 54-57.]

“Problematizing a sole aspect of the struggle—‘movement’—proved a major obstacle from the start because it made the workers movement a catalyst of productivism and industrialization and turned workers into eulogists of their own enslavement. With neoliberalism, the flip side of the struggle—the ‘refusal of work,’ non-movement, or inaction—has either been ignored or inadequately problematized.

“The refusal of work has thus always referred to something else, to politics in the guise of the party or State.… Feminist movements, by refusing to exercise the functions—and work of—‘women,’ have in general followed this strategy rather than the classical political one. However, the anthropology of the workers’ refusal remains by and large an anthropology of work; class subjectivation remains always that of ‘workers’ and ‘producers.’ Laziness points to an entirely different anthropology and to an ethics of a completely different kind. By undermining the very foundations of ‘work,’ laziness not only thwarts ‘producer’ identities, it undoes sexual identities as well. The anthropology of modernity itself—the subject and individual ‘man,’ the freedom and universality of ‘man’—is consequently put into question.”

[Maurizio Lazzarato. Marcel Duchamp and The Refusal of Work. Joshua David Jordan, translator. Los Angeles, California: Semiotext(e). 2014. Pages 7-8.]

“Henry George’s free trade principles also spawned the geolibertarianism movement, a ‘political philosophy that holds along with other forms of libertarian individualism that each individual has an exclusive right to the fruits of his or her labor, as opposed to this product being owned collectively by society or the community’ (Wikipedia). Geolibertarianism (also known as geoanarchism) is, in a sense, a branch of anarcho-capitalism, taking its tenets from [John] Locke, [Thomas] Jefferson, and [Adam] Smith.” [Karen DeCoster, “Henry George and the Tariff Question.” Mises Daily Article. April 19th, 2006. Online publication. No pagination.]

“The term ‘rent’ is most generally defined as a payment for the use of any resource …. ‘Land rent’ could refer either to the actual amount paid by tenants or to the potential or economic rent. My analysis here is based on an assessment or estimate of what the plot-devoid-of-improvements would rent for in a market or auction. This has been called ‘ground rent’ or ‘economic land rent,’ but those names and others are easily misunderstood. To ensure against the hazard of reasonable but erroneous inference, I propose an exotic label, geo-rent. ‘Geo’ in Latin means earth or ground, and it also suggests George, as in Henry George.” [Fred E. Foldvary, “Geo-Rent: A Plea to Public Economists.” Econ Journal Watch. Volume 2, number 1, April 2005. Pages 106-132.]

“The geolibertarian philosophy is convergent with classical liberalism and is not inherently tied to free market environmentalism by its interpretation of property rights. Although geolibertarians, like all libertarians, believe in the concept of self-ownership, that one is the property holder of one’s body and therefore holds legitimate ownership of the fruits of one’s labour, they refute that occupation of resources (such as land) for the accumulation of wealth makes these resources individual property. They believe instead that the planet is a common heritage that should be accessed by everyone equally under the law.

“Geolibertarians suggest to reform the tax system in order to incentivise environmental protection, without being opposed to the general concept of free markets. They uphold the concept of land value taxation (LVT). LVT taxes unimproved land value (meaning the value of the land without the improvements made through human action, such as the construction of a house), and redistributes the so called Citizen’s Dividend. This policy is known as the oldest existing basic income proposal, dating back to 483 BC …, when a silver deposit was found in the village of Laureium near Athens in Greece. The Athenian leader Themistocles convinced the local population to invest the revenue from this deposit in a large fleet. This proposal was opposed to the idea of the statesman Aristides who wanted to share the dividend from the mine (10 drachmas each) equally among the population, as a basic income.”

[Bill Wirtz, “The Essence of Free Market Environmentalism: protection through private property and the rule of law.” Policy Paper 16/40. Contraditório Think Tank. Lisbon, Portugal. October, 2016. Pages 1-21.]

“Although specific First Amendment standards change in response to social circumstances and can be the subject of some dispute, scholars working within this libertarian tradition see the foundations of the argument for free speech as timeless, transcending the particular intellectual fashions of any era. The leading proponents of civil libertarianism believe that uninhibited debate on matters of public importance primarily serves the interests of the audience rather than the speakers. They believe that social policy will neither be wisely made nor accurately reflect public sentiment unless citizens enjoy the full benefits of an unrestricted (or relatively unrestricted) freedom of expression. Judicial activism on behalf of free speech is usually justified by a more general judicial obligation to police the democratic process. Advocates of broad interpretations of the First Amendment believe that courts can only tolerate regulating opinions that are ‘the unmediated cause of fairly immediate improper action.’ Thus, they propose such standards of judicial protection as ‘clear and present danger,’ ‘incitement,’ ‘absolute protection,’ and ‘the speech/conduct distinction.’” [Mark A. Graber. Transforming Free Speech: The Ambiguous Legacy of Civil Libertarianism. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1991. Page 5.]

“Under the U.S. Constitution, public schools have to address any harassment against LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered] students the same way they would address harassment against any other student. And a federal education law called Title IX bars public schools from ignoring harassment based on gender stereotyping. What this all means is that public schools can’t ignore harassment based on appearance or behavior that doesn’t ‘match’ your gender: boys who wear makeup, girls who dress ‘like a boy,’ or students who are transgender. Nor can school officials tell you that you have to change who you are or that the harassment is your fault because of how you dress or act.” [Editor, “Know Your Rights!: A Guide for LGBT High School Students.” American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). New York. Undated. Pages 1-2.]

“Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union wish to thank the journalists, attorneys, and others who generously shared their time—and in some cases, sensitive information about their experiences and practices—to ensure that this report properly captured their perspectives. We are especially grateful because many interviewees kindly fielded uncomfortable questions, which required them to lay bare their uncertainties about the adequacy of their professional practices for operating under the cloud of large-scale, electronic surveillance. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union would also like to thank those government officials who spoke to us about delicate matters related to ongoing surveillance programs, as well as the public affairs officers and others who facilitated those conversations.” [Editor. With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy. New York: Human Rights Watch. July, 2014. Pages 103-104.]

“The anarchists’ attitude toward the shortcomings and weaknesses of hierarchic and centralized parties may, therefore, be summarized as follows. The hierarchic and centralized parties destroy the revolutionary cause and action, and they kill the spirit of rebellion and spontaneity. The Center decides everything and does not leave any initiative to individual members and local groups. Centralism transforms the worker into a tool in the hands of a force that acts as a preceptor or tutor … and under the tutorship of a party of intellectuals …, a force that stands outside and above the worker’s will, and deprives him of any initiative and independence …. Such parties destroy any audacity of thought, and breed extreme caution and circumspection in their central committees; their structure and, in particular, the principle of centralization, generate inevitably the formation of a party bureaucracy. Finally, in spite of their most praised quality—unity of action—they rather provoke splits and scissions instead of avoiding them, because, as a rule, decisions are arrived at by majority vote which implies the submission of the minority to this kind of decisions.” [Michael Confino. Organization as Ideology: Dilemmas of the Russian Anarchists (1903-1914). Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 10.]

“The politics that seduces us is not ethical, it is cruel. Few emotions burn like cruelty. Those motivated by cruelty are neither fair nor impartial. Their actions speak with an intensity that does not desire permission, let alone seek it. While social anarchism sings lullabies of altruism, there are those who play with the hot flames of cruelty. We are drawn to the strength of Frantz Fanon’s wretched of the earth, who find their voice only through the force of their actions, the sting of women of color’s feminist rage, which establishes its own economy of violence for those who do not have others committing violence on their behalf, the spirit of Italy’s lapsed movement of autonomy, which fueled radicals who carved out spaces of freedom by going on the attack …, the assaults of Antonin Artaud’s dizzying Theatre of Cruelty, which defames the false virtues of audience through closeness with the underlying physicality of thought, and the necessity of Gilles Deleuze’s ontological cruelty, which returns difference through a change so painful that it breaks through the backdrop of indifference.…

“Masochism. Cruelty materializes out of the world itself. Spiders are never taught how to spin a web or suck an ant dry. It is merely how they live. Meaning is not some human thing that we invented to make sense of the dumb universe, nor is it given from on high from some divine all-knowing authority. Thought bubbles up, escaping through cracks. We breathe it in like gas, sip on it like wine, or let is pass right through us like some hard, undigestible meal – and to our hazard. For thought is what allows us to override our programming, biological and social. There are those sadists who think of themselves as warriors of truth. Their names annoyingly find their way into many conversations, ‘Christopher Hitchens said that…’ ‘Did you hear what Richard Dawkins did the other day…?’ Their sadism shows them to be nothing but narcissists who pleasure themselves by condescending to others. The sadist’s economy of cruelty is self-serving, as it works through a zero-sum game that builds up the sadist by tearing down their foes.”

[Hostis. A Short Introduction to the Politics of Cruelty. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 7.]

“… rather than focus on conventional political venues, which tend to be structurally rigged against systemic change, commoners are more focused on creating their own alternative systems outside of the market and state. It is not as if they have abandoned conventional politics and regulation as vehicles for self-defense, or progressive change; it’s just that they recognize the inherent limits of electoral politics and policy-driven solutions, at a time when these channels are so corrupted. Even in the best circumstances, conventional policy systems tend to be legalistic, expensive, expert-driven, bureaucratically inflexible, and politically corruptible, which make them a hostile vehicle for serious change ‘from the bottom.’” [David Bollier. Commoning as a Transformative Social Paradigm. Washington, D.C.: The Next System Project. 2015. Page 3.]

“By a cooperative solidarity commonwealth, I mean a system of interlocking cooperative ownership structures in all industries and all sectors of the economy, where cooperatives and other community-based enterprises support one another by building linked supply chains, collaborating on projects, and sharing funding. These interconnections start locally but build into regional, national, and international interlocking structures, as needed (and as is rational).…

“The term cooperative can be loosely defined to include any kind of economic cooperation in a solidarity system, but my definition privileges cooperative ownership and cooperative enterprises. By solidarity system, I mean a non-hierarchical, non-exploitative, equitable set of economic relationships and activities geared toward the grassroots—that’s of the people (people before profit), indigenous, participatory, based on human needs, humane values, and ecological sustainability. In the solidarity system, surplus, or profit, is shared in equitable ways, through democratic decision making, and used for the common good. Risks are collectivized, skills are perfected, learning is continuous, and economic practices are sustainable (both ecologically and from a business point of view), bringing collective prosperity. Capital is democratized and widely owned or controlled.”

[Jessica Gordon Nembhard. Building a Cooperative Solidarity Commonwealth. Washington, D.C.: The Next System Project. 2016. Pages 2-3.]

“… any anarchist social theory would have to reject self-consciously any trace of vanguardism. The role of intellectuals is most definitively not to form an elite that can arrive at the correct strategic analyses and then lead the masses to follow. But if not that, what? This is one reason I’m calling this essay ‘Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology’—because this is one area where I think anthropology is particularly well positioned to help. And not only because most actually-existing self-governing communities, and actually-existing non-market economies in the world have been investigated by anthropologists rather than sociologists or historians. It is also because the practice of ethnography provides at least something of a model, if a very rough, incipient model, of how nonvanguardist revolutionary intellectual practice might work. When one carries out an ethnography, one observes what people do, and then tries to tease out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic logics that underlie their actions; one tries to get at the way people’s habits and actions makes sense in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of. One obvious role for a radical intellectual is to do precisely that: to look at those who are creating viable alternatives, try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing, and then offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities—as gifts.” [David Graeber. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago, Illinois: Prickly Paradigm Press, LLC. 2004. Pages 11-12.]

“The problem with [David] Graeber is not his study of anthropology; this is valuable. It is his commitment to reformism. Such an approach fails to warn the workers that even a consistent fight for reforms will provoke a confrontation with the state. For Graeber, long-term revolutionary goals are best won through the struggle for reforms. For revolutionary class-struggle anarchists, even short-term reforms are best won through the guiding struggle for revolution.” [Wayne Price. Fragments of a Reformist Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Page 7.]

“Academic anthropology has embraced Marxism in a way that it never embraced anarchism, and [David] Graeber – who has been closely involved in the Occupy movement – puts this down to the latter’s natural orientation towards ethical practice rather than universalist or ‘high’ theory. This same fragmentary quality may, of course, help to account for anarchism’s intellectual appeal in an era marked by scepticism towards grand narratives. While part of Graeber’s short and self-consciously fragmentary book rehearses critiques of capitalism, exploitation and alienation that are essentially those of Marxism, he also asks after the potential application of anarchist ideas to anthropological research. This in turn raises questions about the relationship between anthropology and political theory and practice more generally. How can, or should, anthropology contribute to promoting change at a grassroots (rather than policy) level?” [Harry Walker, “On Anarchist Anthropology.” Anthropology of This Century. Issue 3, January 2012. Web. No pagination.]

“Radical Anthropology was an individual attempt to create a new and important way of thinking within current anthropology and the radical milieu. It failed. While the attempt failed, it is important to recognize that there is a radical anthropology — one that is radical in theory and praxis. I have put together the following, as an introduction to radical/anarchist anthropology. It is by no means a static or solid view, and should be seen as personal ideas that need to be scrutinized closely. If you are skeptical of any of the statements I made, please browse this site, especially the writings section, for more information on this mode of though.…

“What is the difference between anarchist and radical anthropology? For the most part, the two terms can be used synonymously. However, anarchist anthropology refers more to a specific mode of thinking within anthropology; radical anthropology refers more to that mode in action — radical praxis.…

“Anarchist anthropology posits a new and radical theoretical and practical framework, however, this does not mean it is a rigid ideology that certain anthropologists can fit into. Looking at ecology, subsistence, history, means and modes of production, gender, etc. are still important to anarchist anthropology, however it also takes this one step further and looks at power, authority, and domination. It is not a rigid framework in which data must fit, but rather a mode of investigation that should create more questions than answers.…

“Power exists, and it will always exist, whether it be the power of the despot or self-empowerment. It’s important to look at the distribution and usurpation of power in society. The consolidation of power is important to understand overt and covert domination. Those in power diminish the freedom and autonomy of all other individuals. They will also keep their power by any means necessary, including violence.…

“The State is a relatively recent conception. It is consolidated power that exists in many forms. Its goal is to control its population in order to replicate itself, and thus recreate power. It is a monopoly of violence, force, and control, over a certain area. Since its conception, inequality, slavery, war, poverty, capitalism, and environmental destruction have ensued. The State, however, did not arise within a vacuum.…

“Cultural relativism is important only up to a degree. It is important to respect human diversity in customs, traditions, and other practices, in that they are understood in the culture’s context. However, cultural relativism is often taken to its extreme: ethical relativism. Ethical relativism should not exist. The domination of humans, animals, and the Earth cannot be looked at relatively. Anything that diminishes human, animal, and environmental freedom — it’s inherent nature — is a destructive force in the world that must be destroyed itself. Civilization, the State, patriarchy, domestication, technology — these are such destructive forces.”

[Anonymous. Radical Anthropology. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Pages 3-4.]

“Intimate bureaucracies monitor the pulse of the society of the spectacle and the corporatized bureaucracies: economics, as in Big Business; culture, as in Museums and Art Markets; mass media, as in Studio Systems and Telecommunication Networks; and politics, as in Big Government. Rather than simply mounting a campaign against big conglomerations of business, government, and culture, these intimate bureaucracies and their works use the forms of corporate bureaucracies for intimate ends.…

“The apparent oxymoron, intimate bureaucracies, is a set of strategically subversive maneuvers and also the very basis for the new productive mythology surrounding the World Wide Web. Electronic networks combine a bureaucracy with its codes, passwords, links, and so on with niche marketing, intimate personal contacts, and the like, creating a hybrid situation or performance. It’s a mix of cold impersonal systems and intimate social connections; it scales up whispering down the lane games. The earlier projects of Anna Freud Banana, Guy Bleus (whose canceling stamps appear in this manifesto), Randall Packer, Geof Huth, and many others all used the trappings of bureaucracies, like canceling stamps, systems of organizing information, and alternative publication networks, to create similar hybrid performances.”

[DJ Readies. Intimate Bureaucracies: A Manifesto. Brooklyn, New York: Punctum Books. 2012. Pages 2-3.]

“Why should we, the proletarians, have children if they are taken by the capitalists to be killed metaphorically in work and by the militarists to be killed in reality as soldiers?

“Antinatalism … is a philosophy with a centuries-long history that is against the birth of new foetuses in the human society for ethical and philosophical reasons.…

“… antinatalists say that we ought to avoid procreation because by procreating we force our children to live negative experiences.…

“When the proletarian procreates, their children will almost certainly will become proletarians themselves and will have the same negative experiences as their parents. Therefore with the act of procreation the proletarian forces their children to live a life without satisfaction and full of sorrow. This, however, based on the positions of antinatalism, is something unethical. It is not right to force others to feel sadness.

“Moreover, the proletarian if they are a conscious revolutionary has an ethical obligation to not assist the current capitalist system to preserve itself. The existence of new proletarians helps the selfpreservation of capitalism, since they become new consumers, new workers, and new soldiers. In short, the birth of new children by proletarians is an act that further promotes capitalism.

“In accordance with the above positions, therefore, the proletarian should not create new children, because in that way they force them to live a life in sadness and at the same time they surrender the children to the capitalists who are known to have no mercy and will use them for the continuing preservation of their unjust system (capitalism could not exist without a lot of proletarians).

“Therefore we provided a possible answer to the question about the revolutionary properties of antinatalism, supporting the view that antinatalism is a revolutionary philosophy because it refuses to supply new proletarians to the capitalist machine, and we see that a possible act of resistance by the proletariat against the capitalist barbarism is the refusal to bring new proletarians in life.…

“It is not against the antinatalist philosophy to adopt children that already exist.”

[Anonymous. Antinatalism as revolution. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 1-2.]

“Revolutionaries oppose every version of democratic ideology. On one hand, after a revolution there won’t be a need to fixate on the process of reaching each decision. For example, one person could decide a day’s delivery schedule in a communal warehouse without oppressing the other workers. Other workers might prefer to spend their time walking on the beach than double checking each decision. The dispatcher would have no coercive power over the other participants in the warehouse. Deciding the schedule would not give her entrenched privilege that she could accumulate and exchanged for other things. For their own enjoyment, the worker might want to collectively decide the menu of a communal kitchen even it was a less efficient use of time.

“A scheme for managing society will by itself create a new society. Highly democratic, highly authoritarian and mixed schemes are now used to administer capitalism. The basic quality of capitalism is that the average person has little or no control over their daily life. Wage labor dominates society. You must exchange your life to buy back your survival. Whether people under capitalism make the decisions about which records they buy, which inmates serve long sentences, what color the street lights are, etc., is irrelevant.

“The community that escapes capitalism will involve people directly controlling the way they live. This is the individual and collective refusal of work, commodity production, and exploitation. This will involve much collective decision making and much individual decision making. The transformation cannot be reduced to a set way of making decisions or a fixed plan of action.…

“Anti-democratic Communism …

“The dispossessed should not be fair but be alive and strong. To be anti-democratic is to reject the fetish of democracy, to not give any voting process an inherently superior position over the total process of living. Proletarians, those who have nothing to lose from the destruction of this society and know it, must become anti-democratic to achieve their ends.

“Workers must seize control of their workplace or their neighborhood. Not to manage them in the same way as before but to have as much power as possible. Even if at a certain point a group of proletarians use votes to decide the path taken, they cannot allow democratic blessings to justify their actions any more than they can allow reformism, unionism, or pacifism to mystify their actions. The number in favor of a decision will be only one factor among many influencing those who refuse the democratic fetish.”

[Against Sleep and Nightmare. The Spectator of Democracy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. Early–to–middle 1990s. Pages 6-7.]

“The purpose of this little talk is to convince you that revolutionaries should oppose democracy in it all its forms.…

“… I want to say a few words about the implication of all this for the nature of communist society.…

“… So, as communists, that is to say: enemies of democracy, I think we should be very suspicious of the concept of planning. As opponents of socialdemocracy we need to reject democracy every bit as vigorously as we reject socialism.”

[Wildcat, “Against Democracy.” Communism Against Democracy. Treason Press, editor. Canberra, Australia: Treason Press. August, 2005. Pages 5-8.]

“We hope that we have proved that majoritarianism of any sort means the repression of individual liberties and the curtailment of direct action in favor of deferred decision-making. For that reason, the number of websites and amount of material which proclaim that anarchists desire direct democracy came as some surprise to us while researching this critique. Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination. Those beliefs lead to many different visions of the world, but when genuinely held they will never lead to democracy. Even ‘direct democracy’ demands surrender to the status quo that produces a hierarchy of group over individual, thus separating us from our desires and our desires from their unfettered realization in direct action. Any who would give up these principles should also give up the name ‘anarchist’ — perhaps in favor of ‘libertarian.’” [Moxie Marlinspike and Windy Hart. An Anarchist Critique of Democracy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Page 8.]

“Critique of contemporary democracy …

“The institutionalization of the modern State, and in particular its democratic form, led to the birth of ‘citizenship.’ Individuals would thus cease to be individuals, and become part of a superior reality – the State – which would provide them with security by preserving a handful of their natural and inalienable rights, and neutralizing tendencies that are harmful to the community. From this assumption three key issues arise: first of all, what tendencies are to be considered harmful to the community, and who decides that? Secondly, what measures will be used to neutralize these harmful tendencies? And thirdly, these supposed rights, which emanate from some authority superior to the individual him or herself, only hold up when authority recognizes them and deigns to grant them. The State defines what tendencies are harmful to the community, grants the rights and guarantees them, decides what is a right and what is not, and the State imposes or revokes such rights, if necessary by force, because the State has the monopoly on force.”

[Coordination of Anarchist Groups. Against Democracy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2013. Pages 12-13.]

“The deschooling of society implies a recognition of the two-faced nature of learning. An insistence on skill drill alone could be a disaster; equal emphasis must be placed on other kinds of learning. But if schools are the wrong places for learning a skill, they are even worse places for getting an education. School does both tasks badly, partly because it does not distinguish between them. School is inefficient in skill instruction especially because it is curricular. In most schools a program which is meant to improve one skill is chained always to another irrelevant task. History is tied to advancement in math, and class attendance to the right to use the playground.

“Schools are even less efficient in the arrangement of the circumstances which encourage the open-ended, exploratory use of acquired skills, for which I will reserve the term ‘liberal education.’ The main reason for this is that school is obligatory and becomes schooling for schooling’s sake: an enforced stay in the company of teachers, which pays off in the doubtful privilege of more such company. Just as skill instruction must be freed from curricular restraints, so must liberal education be dissociated from obligatory attendance. Both skill-learning and education for inventive and creative behavior can be aided by institutional arrangement, but they are of a different, frequently opposed nature.”

[Ivan Illich. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row. 1971. Ebook edition.]

“I called for the disestablishment of schools for the sake of improving education and here, I noticed, lay my mistake. Much more important than the disestablishment of schools, I began to see, was the reversal of those trends that make of education a pressing need rather than a gift of gratuitous leisure. I began to fear that the disestablishment of the educational church would lead to a fanatical revival of many forms of degraded, all-encompassing education, making the world into a universal classroom, a global schoolhouse. us more important question became, ‘Why do so many people-even ardent critics of schooling-become addicted to education, as to a drug?’” [Ivan Illich, “Foreward.” Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader. Oakland, California: PK Press. 2008. Pages iii-v.]

“‘Deschooling Society’ was more about society than about schools. Society needs deschooling because it is a mimic of the school system that it engenders and that engenders it. In our current society, individuals are expected to work in dull and stultifying jobs for future rewards, as they are trained to do in schools. By deschooling, [Ivan] Illich did not mean taking schooling into the home, nor did he mean ‘free schools’ in which curricula was set by the students. Schooling of any kind that limits a person’s capacity and desire to self-learn at all times anywhere is detrimental to that person living a full life.

“All life, according to Illich, should be “convivial.” That is, it should be lived in joyous collaboration with friends and colleagues. Learning and work alike should be fun and fulfilling.”

[Bill Ellis, “Deschooling Society/ Creating Learning Communities.” Learning Cooperatives Quarterly: The Newsletter of Life-Long Learning. Volume 1, number 2, winter 2003. Pages 1-2.]

“Anarchists have taken initiatives in relation to many of the case studies, for example on self-managed learning, opposition to nuclear weapons, and voting. Occasionally I mention connections to anarchist campaigning and theory, but not systematically. That is because my purpose is not an examination of anarchist theory and practice in relation to education, defence and electoral politics – though that would be a significant and worthy endeavour – but to examine areas of reform in relation to self-managed alternatives.…

“… [One] radical alternative is deschooling, popularised by Ivan Illich. Deschooling means getting rid of the domination of education by professional teachers in institutionalised schooling systems. Instead, children would learn through their involvement in community activities, for example through helping out in workplaces or participating in organisations, as well as voluntary learning activities arranged by themselves or others. The deschooling alternative is not welldefined, but is certainly compatible with self-management.”

[Brian Martin, “Reform – when is it worthwhile?” Anarchist Studies. Volume 20, number 2, autumn–winter 2012. Pages 55-71.]

“… [An] in-depth critique of schooling in particular came from Ivan Illich in Deschooling Society, published in 1970. Illich was opposed to the school as an institution and formed a cogent critique of its functions. Schools divide social reality: ‘education becomes unworldly and the world becomes noneducational.’ Illich saw childhood as a product of industrial society and a social category that perpetuates the authority of the schoolteacher. ‘Once young people have allowed their imaginations to be formed by curricular instruction, they are conditioned to institutional planning of every sort. “Instruction” smothers the horizon of their imaginations. They cannot be betrayed, but only short-changed, because they have been taught to substitute expectations for hope.’ His criticisms of schooling are manifestly evident and entirely valid: ‘The school system today performs the threefold function common to powerful churches throughout history. It is simultaneously the repository of society’s myth, the institutionalization of that myth’s contradictions, and the locus of the ritual which reproduces and veils the disparities between myth and reality.’

“The themes inherent in theories of schooling have been rehashed for centuries. It is all too easy to see the devastating effects of schooling in our everyday lives: people have lost their imaginations and others must determine the meaning of our lives. Students are taught to recognize that they are constantly under surveillance. The rooms are distributed along a corridor at regular intervals. The teacher stands in front of the class making sure that everyone displays acquiescence in receiving the lesson. Later the students are examined, tested–observed and controlled. The examination ‘manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected. The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance.’ We must be made dependent, even helpless–memorizing bits of knowledge without any need. All sorts of industries would collapse, John Taylor Gatto observed, ‘Unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people continued to pour out of our schools each year.’ Capital must dominate the future not just through the production of new commodity-things and technologies, but through the production of commodity-people. Every individual is merely a component, a piece of machinery. This is the essence of modern schooling. To argue otherwise would be mundane, untrue, and utterly academic.”

[Jan D. Matthews. Toward the Destruction of Schooling. Santa Cruz, California: Quiver Distro. 2004. Public domain. Page 27.]

“The most devastating criticism we can make of the organised system is that its effects are profoundly anti-educational. In Britain, at five years old, most children cannot wait to get into school. At fifteen, most cannot wait to get out. On the day I am writing, our biggest-selling newspaper devotes its front page to a photograph of a thirteen-year-old truant, with his comment, ‘The worse part is I thought I only had another two years to sweat out, then they put the leaving age up to sixteen. That’s when I thought, sod it.’ The likeliest lever for change in the organised system will come, not from criticism or example from outside, but from pressure from below. There has always been a proportion of pupils who attend unwillingly, who resent the authority of the school and its arbitrary regulations, and who put a low value on the processes of education because their own experience tells them that it is an obstacle race in which they are so often the losers that they would be mugs to enter the competition. This is what school has taught them, and when this army of also-rans, no longer cowed by threats, no longer amenable to cajolery, no longer to be bludgeoned by physical violence into sullen acquiescence, grows large enough to prevent the school from functioning with even the semblance of relevance or effectiveness, the educational revolution will begin.” [Colin Ward. Schools No Longer. Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 1973. Page 6.]

“In my own mind, co-education was of vital importance. It was not merely an indispensable condition of realising what I regard as the ideal result of rational education; it was the ideal itself, initiating its life in the Modern School, developing progressively without any form of exclusion, inspiring a confidence of attaining our end. Natural science, philosophy, and history unite in teaching, in face of all prejudice to the con trary, that man and woman are two comple mentary aspects of human nature, and the failure to recognise this essential and important truth has had the most disastrous consequences.” [Francisco Ferrer. The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School. Joseph McCabe, translator. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1913. Page 35.]

“I venture to say quite plainly: the oppressed and the exploited have a right to rebel, because they have to reclaim their rights until they enjoy their full share in the common patrimony. The Modern School, however, has to deal with children, whom it prepares by instruction for the state of man hood, and it must not anticipate the cravings and hatreds, the adhesions and rebellions, which may be fitting sentiments in the adult. In other words, it must not seek to gather fruit until it has been produced by cultivation, nor must it attempt to implant a sense of responsibility until it has equipped the conscience with the fundamental conditions of such responsibility. Let it teach the children to be men; when they are men, they may declare themselves rebels against injustice.

“It needs very little reflection to see that a school for rich children only cannot be a rational school. From the very nature of things it will tend to insist on the mainte nance of privilege and the securing of their advantages. The only sound and enlight ened form of school is that which co-educates the poor and the rich, which brings the one class into touch with the other in the inno cent equality of childhood, by means of the systematic equality of the rational school.

“With this end in view I decided to secure pupils of every social rank and include them in a common class, adopting a system accom modated to the circumstances of the parents or guardians of the children; I would not have a fixed and invariable fee, but a kind of sliding scale, with free lessons for some and different charges for others.”

[Francisco Ferrer. The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School. Joseph McCabe, translator. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1913. Pages 45-46.]

“This pamphlet deals with a significant chapter in the history of education—the Modern School movement and the role it played in fostering freedom in education. We wish to highlight the intimate relationship of education and the spirit of freedom. Francisco Ferrer was the founder, the inspiration of the Modern School and his teachings are cherished in the Libertarian movement.

“Francisco Ferrer y Guardia is remembered by lovers of liberty all over the world. He is remembered for his pioneering work in opening in 1901 a Modern School in Barcelona, Spain, which became the model for two hundred or more modern schools in that country. All the schools were supported by unions and Liberals and Libertarians who wanted to end the centuries-old church control of education by rote and memorization.

“Ferrer also established a Libertarian educational publishing house to provide secular textbooks for the modern schools. This was the most effective educational work in Spain.

“When Ferrer started his educational work, about two-thirds of the people of Spain were illiterate and the Church regarded its future as threatened if the Spanish people learned to read and to reason for themselves.

“Between 1901, when Ferrer opened his first Modern School, and 1909, when he was executed, the Church and the Spanish State initiated three legal actions against Ferrer. The third trial condemned Ferrer to death under false accusations and he was executed October 13, 1909. There was a worldwide condemnation of the unjust trial and execution. Modern Schools were organized in many countries to honor his memory and his work.

“More schools were established in the United States than any other country. The Modern School in the Ferrer Colony, Stelton, New Jersey, existed longer than any other Ferrer Modern School from 1911 to 1915 in New York City and then from 1915 to 1953 in Stelton, New Jersey. Most of those who went to the Modern School in Stelton remember their years at the school with warmth and love. Growing up in freedom, they enjoyed memories of the Modern School that are among the most treasured of their lives. Friendships formed while they were in the Modern School remained strong over the years.

“In 1972 the first reunion of former pupils, teachers, parents and colonists was organized by Paul Avrich who tapped the unsuspected richness of memories of living in the free environment of the Ferrer Modern School. Nearly two hundred of us gathered. The years since leaving the school slipped away as we relived the experience of freedom in the school and the colony that had been established to honor the memory and work of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia—A man who had accomplished so much in pioneering the Modern School in Spain at the cost of his life.

“The school offered a program for children of pre-high school age who left the Ferrer School for high school as they reached age 13 or 14 years. At any one time, the school had fewer than 100 children. Nevertheless, nearly two hundred former pupils, teachers, parents and colonists came to the first reunion which was held at Rutgers University. Our memories of the early years at the school and in the colony were so rich, our shared recollections of those early years were so warm and vivid, that there was a spontaneous decision to meet again the following year.

“From 1972 to 1989 we have gotten together for what has become an annual reunion—for sixteen of the last seventeen years. Former pupils and teachers compete with one and another to share memories of life at the school. Nellie Dick, one of the earliest teachers at the school, was a lively ninety-six at the latest reunion in 1989. Paul Avrich, who wrote a book on the history of the Modern School movement, has contributed much to the interesting and stimulating program each year.

“If we question whether the Modern School and a free education were important in the lives of those who went to the school in their childhood, the answer is found in the experience of the reunions. Although the school was closed in 1953 and the earliest pupils left the school before 1920, between one hundred and two hundred people have come to the reunion each year from all parts of the country. One hundred and forty came to the reunion in 1989.

“This last reunion was especially interesting as three former pupils of the Modern School in Spain presented papers on their memories of the Free School in Spain. The three alumni of the Modern School in Spain, later renamed the Nature School, were enlisted in this project by a good friend and comrade, Federico Arcos. We deeply appreciate his assistance in helping us share this experience in free education. We also thank the three former pupils of the Modern School—or Nature School—in Spain for sharing their memories of free education with us as we had done earlier among ourselves. I have translated the three memoirs of Pura Perez, Diego Camacho and Mario Jordana from Spanish.”

[Abe Bluestein. The Modern School Movement: Historical and Personal Notes on the Ferrer Schools in Spain: Contributions by Pura Perez, Mario Jordana, Abel Paz, Martha Ackelsberg. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1990. Pages 3-4.]

“Given that ideologies such as National Socialism, National Communism and National Bolshevism have each attempted to combine two seemingly diverse and contradictory opposites, the arrival of National-Anarchism always seemed inevitable. But what distinguishes the NRF from its counterparts within the prevailing Left-Right spectrum, however, is the fact that it is seeking to create a synthesis. Indeed, Synthesis is the name of a new online magazine established by the Cercle de la Rose Noire, through which NRF [National Revolutionary Faction] thinkers, Evolians and prominent ex-members of the now defunct White Order of Thule (WOT) are promoting the three-fold strategy of ‘Anarchy’, ‘Occulture’ and ‘Metapolitics.’” [Troy Southgate. Tradition and Revolution. London: Arktos Media Ltd. 2010. Pages 123-124.]

“National-Anarchists wish to see the establishment of autonomous, mono-racial communities in which people can occupy their own space in which to live according to their own values and principles. Not in a coercive sense, of course; National-Anarchism is a decidedly mutualist concept and has – to some extent – been influenced by the work of Richard Hunt and Hakim Bey.” [Troy Southgate. Tradition and Revolution. London: Arktos Media Ltd. 2010. Page 316.]

“Third Positionism is a neo-fascist tendency. It advocates for a break from marxism and capitalism alike, and seeks to create alliances across ‘racial separatist’ lines. Out of this tendency has come the absurd idea of ‘National Anarchism.’ Secessionism is a common theme in this tendency. Secessionism refers to pulling away and declaring independence, which in the eyes of a fascist would mean racial independence. While indigenous sovereigntists want a separation with colonial culture, it would seem clear, though perhaps easy for some to confuse, that they are not arguing for white-supremacist categorizations of separation such as ‘all people from Europe are white, white people must stick with white people, all people from Africa are black, black people must stick with black people.’” [Llud. Towards Unsettling Paths. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Pages 7-8.]

“In the case of the proposed definition [of anarchism], it is possible to draw strong lines between anarchism and phenomena such as “anarcho-capitalism” or “national anarchism”. These are paradoxical neologisms that signify schools of thought that fit nowhere into the proposed definition, mainly because they have divisions between people built into their make-up that undermine any meaningful sense of justice and egalitarianism. Hence, there is not even “family resemblance,” to use another Wittgenstein term.” [Gabriel Kuhn. The Meaning of Anarchism: ‘Black Flame,’ Definitions, and Struggles over Identity. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Page 9.]

“Well, however that may be, here we are in the fight; and if I am called an anarchist, ‘soit! [so be it!]’ But I throw my bomb with a difference. If I do not throw a physical bomb, it is only because there is none big enough. For the Government is in the hands of the bourgoisie and the canaille, and it is for us aristocrats to throw the bombs. There can be no peace between Socrates and Athens, between Jesus and Jerusalem. We must then first throw moral bombs, and this book is mine!” [Aleister Crowley. The World’s Tragedy. Austin, Texas: 100ᵗʰ Monkey Press. 2008. Page xxii.]

“I have brought him frankincense.

“He shall dull therewith the sense

“Of his slaves, that they may be

“Docile in their slavery.

“He shall fill their aching minds

“With the smoke that madness finds

“The sole cloak of anarchy.

“Misty vapours demon-wrought

“Fill the cold clear dome of thought.”

[Aleister Crowley. The World’s Tragedy. Austin, Texas: 100ᵗʰ Monkey Press. 2008. Page 56.]

“‘He claims to be utterly selfish,’ vibrated her tense tones, ‘because he includes every individual in his idea of himself. He can’t feel free as long as there are slaves about. Of course, there are some people whose nature it is to be slaves; they must be left to serve. But there are lots of us who are kings and don’t know it; who suffer from the delusion that they ought to bow to public opinion, all sorts of alien domination. He spends his life fighting to emancipate people in this false subjection, because they are parts of himself. He has no ideas about morality. His sense of honour, even, means nothing to him as such. It is simply that he happened to be born a gentleman. ‘If I were a dog,’ he said to me once, ‘I Should bark. If I were an owl, I should hoot. There’s nothing in either which is good or bad in itself. The only question is, what is the natural gesture?’ He thinks it his mission in the world to establish this Law of Thelema.’” [Aleister Crowley. The Diary of a Drug Fiend. London: W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1922. Page 206.]

“The goddess Dysnomia to me is a being beyond all bounds and limitations, all apparent contradictions and all divisions, that is to say she is lawless, to me this includes the laws of physics, linguistics, rationality and all boundaries created by various dualities or any other thing that she does not wish to adhere to, all things she does are according to her will as she is pure anarchy.…

“She is in many ways a goddess of Chaos and while anarchists are again and again denying anarchism’s similarity to chaos this is in many ways because people do not really understand the term Chaos, or any of its traditional implications or meanings, or even its scientific meanings. This concept so hated by control freaks is really not so bad, in fact Chaos contains all order and more, we were always in it we just didn’t realize it, in fact there is no way to not be in Chaos, especially since nobody not even scientists can honestly claim to totally understand any universal order that they believe in. If Chaos is reality than anarchism is the closest culture to it, the most in line with the truth and so anarchists should really take this as a compliment. While it is probably closer to say anarchism is each individual’s personal order working with others it is about as close to chaos as you can get, without maybe being silent on the subject. So while some fool may wish to construe anarchism as ‘lawlessness’ and ‘Chaos’ in a pejorative manner they are really just pointing out their own ignorance and fear of real freedom. Chaos is not ‘bad’ since ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is a type of order and so I think it’s important to point out that Chaos is not something we should avoid considering.”

[A. Wretch. Liber Anarkhos: An Anarchist Grimoire. Privately published. 2012. No pagination.]

“Anarcho-Satanism is but one among a plethora of micro-cultures of resistance… micro-cultures which will ultimately be widely divergent. The possible iterations of resistant micro-cultures are as diverse as the individuals of which those cultures could comprise. However, many groups of people who resist the ongoing global expansion of capitalism and monotheism share common traits- often these traits are the disbelief in (and discontent with) the supposed authority of God and in the supposedly ‘divinely’ sanctioned authorities of the monotheist religious institution, the national government (the state), and of the multinational corporation (the practice of global capitalistic exploitation). The United States government and many other governments enforce social norms based in religious values despite declarations of secularism (through supposedly ‘representative,’ ‘democratic’ government). In conjunction with this, multinational corporations enforce the social norms of economic stratification—inequality is perpetuated under the guise of competition for social influence and competition for greater quality of life (symbolized by the acquisition and retention of liquid capital and corporate products). Both of these social norms are intended to insulate hierarchical power—a power based, in a large part, on the assumption of a singular ‘divine’ deity which wields control above all others. Under this system, many different groups of individuals who do not fulfill the required ‘guidelines’ for normativity have their basic rights violated, their existences filled with injustices, and their lives simultaneously commodified and devalued. Due to this reason, Anarcho-Satanists take on an anti-normative standpoint which pushes against these unjust and falsely constructed ideas of acceptable normativity. Instead, we strive to create (through personal and community action) a system devoid of the constraints of hierarchically imposed social norms, which are inherently flawed and have proven quite dangerous to many individuals and communities in a vast array of circumstances. It thus becomes the moral duty of the critically-thinking, mature, aware human to resist these hierarchical institutions in order to ensure the safety and well-being of themselves and others. Towards these efforts, the Church of Satan Anarchist seeks to combine the utilization of the anti-theist, mythological, empowering symbolism of Satan with Anarchist social critique, ideological principles, and direct action. In the recognition of the divergence of micro-cultures of resistance, the Church of Satan Anarchist does not seek to become an elitist vanguard ‘leader’ of a resistance movement, but instead seeks to become a micro-culture in and of itself which can combine and ally multilaterally, intersectionally, and cooperatively with other micro-cultures which resist capitalism, the state, hierarchy, injustice, and monotheism.” [Anonymous. The Teachings of The Church of Satan Anarchist. Privately published. 2017. Pages 6-7.]

“This book speaks of a New Inquisition, a New Idol and a New Agnosticism.

“By the New Inquisition I mean to designate certain habits of repression and intimidation that are becoming increasingly commonplace in the scientific community today. By the New Idol I mean to designate rigid beliefs that form the ideological superstructure of the New Inquisition. By the New Agnosticism I mean to desigate an attitude of mind which has elsewhere been called ‘model agnosticism’ and which applies the agnostic principle not just to the ‘God’ concept but to ideas of all sorts in all areas of thoughts and ideology.

“The agnostic principle refuses total belief or total denial and regards models as tools to be used only and always where not appropriate. It does not regard any models, or any class of models, and more ‘profound’ than any other models, or any class of models but asks only how a model serves, or fails to serve, those who use it. The agnostic principle is intended here as a broad ‘humanistic’ or ‘existential sense, and is not intended to be narrowly technical or philosophical only.

“This book is deliberately polemical because I believe models, as tools, should be tested in that kind of combat which [Friedrich] Nietzsche metaphorically called ‘war’ and [Karl] Marx called dialectical struggle. It is deliberately shocking because I do not want any of its ideas to seem any less stark or startling than they are.”

[Robert Anton Wilson. The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science. Tempe, Arizona: New Falcon Publications. 1995. Page i.]

“The Old Agnosticism defined itself chiefly by its opposition to the dogmas of religious fundamentalism.

“The New Agnosticism of this book seems to define itself by its opposition to the dogmas of materialist/rationalist Fundamentalism.

“Yet the agnostic attitude―which I keep gently hinting is also the creative attitude …―remains similar. The agnostic does not want to be bulldozed into joining a stampede of any sort, or bowing to any idol.”

[Robert Anton Wilson. The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science. Tempe, Arizona: New Falcon Publications. 1995. Page 139.]

“Whatever the Illuminati were aiming at had not been accomplished. Proof: If it had, they would not still be conspiring in secret.

“Since almost everything has been tried in the course of human history, find out what hasn’t been tried (at least not on a large scale)-and that will be the condition to which the Illuminati are trying to move the rest of mankind.

“Capitalism had been tried. Communism has been tried. Even Henry George’s Single Tax has been tried, in Australia. Fascism, feudalism and mysticism have been tried. Anarchism has never been tried.

“Anarchism was frequently associated with assassinations. It had an appeal for freethinkers, such as [Peter] Kropotkin and [Mikhail] Bakunin, but also for religious idealists, like Tolstoy and Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement. Most anarchists hoped, Joachim-like, to redistribute the wealth, but Rebecca had once told him about a classic of anarchist literature, Max Stirner’s The Ego and His Own, which had been called ‘the Billionaire’s Bible’ because it stressed the advantages the rugged individualist would gain in a stateless society-and Cecil Rhodes was an adventurer before he was a banker. The Illuminati were anarchists.”

[Robert Anton Wilson. The Illuminatus Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, Leviathan. New York: Dell Publishing imprint of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. 1975. Pages 52-53.]

“No form of libertarianism or anarchism (including anarchocapitalism and anarcho-communism) can successfully compete with welfarism or totalitarianism, under present conditions.” [Robert Anton Wilson. The Illuminati Papers. Berkeley Publishing, California: Ronin Publishing, Inc. 1997. Page 28.]

“Virtually every occult lodge or order in the country has the dubious honor of being regarded us a group of crypto-Satanists or clandestine followers of the “forbidden left-hand path” by some other occult lodge or order. Orthodox Christians still dread the ‘witches’ (followers of wicca, the cult of the great Mother Goddess). I know hundreds of witches around the country and they’re all fine people. The local leader of Crowley’s notorious Ordo Templi Orientis (denounced as a group of closet diabolists by scores of Christian occultists) is also a fine man, in my judgment. More than 75 percent of all occult prejudices are as bigoted as mainstream religious or political prejudices.” [Robert Anton Wilson. Don’t Be Afraid of Black Magick. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Page 3.]

“The economics of Keristans, I learned, are as strange as their religion and their sexual practices. At present, in the East Village group, four are working, four are receiving compensation from the Department of Welfare, and 18 are living hand-to-mouth. In practice, the eight are supporting the other 18 — or, if you prefer, the four who are working and the State of New York are supporting the 18. (Whenever anyone is in danger of eviction, for example, the group raises the money for that month’s rent on that apartment.) What keeps this from being pure parasitism is that the ones who are working and the ones who are sponging are continually changing places, and that the ones not working are providing services for the entire group, such as baby-sitting or shopping or carrying clothes to the laundermat. When money gets especially short, a few members will return to their parent’s home to live for a while. (The groups in Passiac and Paterson each have a high-salaried executive in them, and the group in Las Vegas are all said to be comfortable.) John Presmont’s Air Force pension guarantees that the New York group will always have an apartment on which the rent is paid up to date.” [Robert Anton Wilson. The Religion of Kerista and Its 69 Positions. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1965. Page 5.]

“Patapsychology begins from Murphy’s Law, as Finnegan called the First Axiom, adopted from Sean Murphy. This says,and I quote,‘The normal does not exist. The average does not exist. We know only a very large but probably finite phalanx of discrete space-time events encountered and endured.’ In less technical language, the Board of the College of Patapsychology offers one million Irish punds [around $700,000 American] to any ‘normalist’ who can exhibit ‘a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary.’” [Robert Anton Wilson. Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Page 2.]

“Larry Labadie had his own point to make in creating that parable: as an anarchist, he believed the State Socialists were carrying over the worst features of Capitalism in their proposed Utopia. To me, however, the parable has a more general meaning, which I would state as follows: If people have lived with something every day of their lives, and especially if they know it has continued for many centuries, it becomes almost impossible to question it without sounding like some kind of pervert or eccentric, or, at best, like an intellectual wiseacre who can be suspected of just playing head-games or merely ‘toying with ideas.’ At worst, the sane, sound domesticated people will decide you want to destroy the world or overthrow the deity or intend some atrocity equally drastic, and they will conspire to silence you.” [Robert Anton Wilson. The Semantics of “Good” & “Evil.” Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1988. Page 2.]

“I, too, have always had a personal horror: the concept of becoming hospitalized while in the United States and thus falling into the hands of the American Medical Association. Fortunately, at the age of sixty, I have managed to avoid this terrifying experience all my life-and hence really only know about the Horror through the pathetic stories told by friends who have actually spent time in American hospitals. These tales sound much like the stories of others I know, survivors of the Holocaust, with one additional misery often included at the end: after ‘liberation’ and escape back to normal non-nightmare life, the butchers go on pursuing you, until you have lost everything in your savings account and gone through bankruptcy court.” [Robert Anton Wilson. Evading Dogmatic Medicine. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 1.]

“The psycho-dynamics of Capitalism, in short, seem to consist of what cyberneticists call a circular-causal process. Born of neurotic anxiety and desensitization (contraction of the life energies), it constantly generates more anxiety through its unpredictable boom-and-bust cycles and the wars incident upon its imperialistic necessity to dump the surplus. But this second-order anxiety (which afflicts the boss as well as the worker, for he, too, is the victim of the cycle) breeds that ‘busy-busy-busy’ compensating activity which drives the whole system ever onward into contradictions, crashes and further anxieties.” [Robert Anton Wilson. Is Capitalism a Revealed Religion? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1961. Page 4.]

“I have performed the following experiment in workshops for nearly 40 years now: Everybody in the class is asked to describe the hall they passed through to get to the classroom. I must have tried this several hundred times by now, and I have never encountered two people who agreed totally about what was or was not in the hall, the color of the walls, or any similar data. We do not walk through the ‘same’ hall: we walk through a reality-tunnel constructed by our imprinted, conditioned and learned brain circuits.” [Robert Anton Wilson. In Doubt We Trust: Cults, religions, and BS in general. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1999. Page 2.]

“The first kings were conquerors. They stole the land by shot and shell, period. Then, they settled down to rob the survivors at a certain rate per year, called taxation. Next, they divided up the land among their relatives or officers in the army, who all became lords-of-the-land, landlords, and were empowered to rob the citizens at a certain other rate per year, called rent. When science and industry appeared, other satraps and sycophants of the royal families received charters to monopolize the resources and means of production, and to rob at a certain rate per year, called capital interest or profit. When banks were formed to circulate the medium of exchange (money), other charters were handed out to others in the bandit-gang, who became bank directors with a license to rob at another rate per year, called money interest or economic interest.” [Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Anarchism and Crime. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1974. Page 5.]

“… I ‘believe’ in libertarianism, in strict scientific method (the objective yoga of the West), in yoga (the neuroscience of the East), in Space Migration, in Life Extension, and in dozens of other things. But I can suspend any of these beliefs at will, or all of them, and look impassively into the Buddhist void, or switch around to other beliefs temporarily, to check out how the world looks to those who hold those beliefs.” [Robert Anton Wilson. Neurological Relativism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1978. Page 2.]

“Nobody in Nutley, New Jersey or Sandusky, Ohio is being hurt when the Cubans throw off their blood-sucking exploiters and establish a people’s government, but several large corporations are being hurt by it. You and I have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, if we are sent down to Cuba to ki1l men, women and children, in order to force them to take the land away from the peasants and give it back to a few landowners; but certain large corporations have a great deal to gain if you and I are sent down there to do that dirty work for them.” [Robert Anton Wilson. What I Didn’t Learn at College. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1971. Page 2.]

“Enforced conformity of human beings — the subjugation of society to the will of the State — leads to generalized stress upon the total organism of each. Modern psychosomatic medicine makes abundantly clear that all life (protoplasm) consists of electro-colloidal equilibrium between gel (total dispersion) and sol (total contraction), and every stress produces contraction, as is seen in exaggerated form in the typical withdrawal of the snail and turtle, a human infant visibly cringing with fear, etc. It is this (usually microscopic) contraction of the physical body that we experience psychically as ‘anxiety.’ When it becomes chronic, this contraction effects the large muscles and creates that ‘hunched, bowed’ look which actors employ when portraying a timid and beaten man. The tendency toward this ‘posture of defeat’ is visible in all State-dominated societies, as it was conspicuously absent in the bold carriage of the State-less Polynesians and American Indians when first contacted.” [Robert Anton Wilson. Sexual Freedom: Why it is Feared. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1962. Page 2.]

“The attempt to remove moral choice from the realm of humanity and place it in a ‘spooky’ or Platonic superhuman realm, thus, has historically usually been allied with political conservatism and reaction; libertarians who espouse this mysticism should be aware they are using the ammunition of the enemy, which may blow their heads off someday. Since Platonic realms cannot be investigated by sensory-sensual-scientific means, no experiment can refute any doctrine offered about them. The experimentalist can only say, as I do, unproven, and perhaps add a few remarks about the ‘meaningless’ nature of propositions that can neither be proven nor refuted. Those attracted to ‘superhuman’ or ‘transmundane’ morality or ‘Natural Law’ or similar metaphysical speculation, therefore, will be drawn chiefly from the ranks of those tempermentally averse to the experimental method, to science, and to ‘revisionism’ in general: those who are seeking an artificial stasis in an otherwise evolving and ever-changing universe. Climbing into bed with a metaphysician means climbing into bed with a reactionary also.” [Robert Anton Wilson. Natural Law, or Don’t Put a Rubber on Your Willy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1986. Page 30.]

“Since monopolized police forces are notoriously graft-ridden and underlie the power of the state to bully and coerce, competing protection systems will be available in an individualist-mutualist system, You won’t have to pay ‘taxes’ to support a Protection Racket that is actually oppressing rather than protecting you. You will only pay dues, where you think it prudent, to protection agencies that actual perform a service you want and need. In general, every commune or syndicate will make its own rules of the game, but the mutualist-individualist tradition holds that, by experience, most communes will choose the systems that maximize liberty and minimize coercion.” [Robert Anton Wilson. Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1988. Page 5.]

“I have found repeatedly that when baffled by a problem in science, in ‘philosophy’ or in daily life, I gain immediate insight by writing down what I know about the enigma in strict E-Prime. Often, solutions appear immediately—just as happens when you throw out the ‘wrong’ software and put the ‘right’ software into your PC. In other cases, I at least get an insight into why the problem remains intractable and where and how future science might go about finding an answer. (This has contributed greatly to my ever-escalating agnosticism about the political, ideological and religious issues that still generate the most passion on this primitive planet.)” [Robert Anton Wilson, “Towards Understanding E-Prime.” ETC: A Review of General Semantics. Volume 46, number 4, winter 1989. Pages 316-319.]

“… I had the good fortune to find a place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were ists of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of ‘agnostic.’ It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the ‘gnostic’ of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To my great satisfaction, the term took; and when the ‘Spectator’ had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in the minds of respectable people, that a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened, was, of course, completely lulled.

“That is the history of the origin of the terms ‘agnostic’ and ‘agnosticism’; and it will be observed that it does not quite agree with the confident assertion of the reverend Principal [Henry Wace] of King’s College [a constituent college of London’s University of London], that ‘the adoption of the term agnostic is only an attempt to shift the issue, and that it involves a mere evasion’ in relation to the Church and Christianity.”

[Thomas Henry Huxley, “Agnosticism,” in Henry Wace, Thomas H. Huxley, Bishop of Peterborough, W. H. Mallock, and Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Christianity and Agnosticism: A Controversy. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1989. Pages 14-56.]

“Anarchists have been claiming for years that anarchy is not chaos. Even anarchism seems to want a natural law, an inner and innate morality in matter, an entelechy or purpose-of-being. (No better than Christians in this respect, or so [Friedrich] Nietzsche believed — radical only in the depth of their resentment.) Anarchism says that ‘the state should be abolished’ only to institute a new more radical form of order in its place. Ontological Anarchy however replies that no ‘state’ can ‘exist’ in chaos, that all ontological claims are spurious except the claim of chaos (which however is undetermined), and therefore that governance of any sort is impossible. ‘Chaos never died.’ Any form of ‘order’ which we have not imagined and produced directly and spontaneously in sheer ‘existential freedom’ for our own celebratory purposes — is an illusion.

“Of course, illusions can kill. Images of punishment haunt the sleep of Order. Ontological Anarchy proposes that we wake up, and create our own day — even in the shadow of the State, that pustulant giant who sleeps, and whose dreams of Order metastatize as spasms of spectacular violence.

“The only force significant enough to facilitate our act of creation seems to be desire, or as Charles Fourier called it, ‘Passion.’ Just as Chaos and Eros (along with Earth and Old Night) are Hesiod’s first deities, so too no human endeavor occurs outside their cosmogeneous circle of attraction.

“The logic of Passion leads to the conclusion that all ‘states’ are impossible, all ‘orders’ illusory, except those of desire. No being, only becoming — hence the only viable government is that of love, or ‘attraction.’ Civilization merely hides from itself — behind a thin static scrim of rationality — the truth that only desire creates values. And so the values of Civilization are based on the denial of desire.

“Capitalism, which claims to produce Order by means of the reproduction of desire, in fact originates in the production of scardty, and can only reproduce itself in unfulfillment, negation, and alienation. As the Spectacle disintegrates (like a malfunctioning VR [video recording] program) it reveals the fleshless bones of the Commodity. like those tranced travelers in Irish fairy tales who visit the Otherworld and seem to dine on supernatural delicacies, we wake in a bleary dawn with ashes in our mouths.

“Individual vs. Group — Self vs. Other — a false dichotomy propagated through the Media of Control, and above all through language. Hermes — the Angel — the medium is the Messenger. All forms of communicativeness should be angelic — language itself should be angelic — a kind of divine chaos. Instead it is infected with a self-replicating virus, an infinite crystal of separation, the grammar which prevents us from killing Nobodaddy once and for all.”

[Hakim Bey. Immediatism: Essays by Hakim Bey. Edinburgh, Scotland, and San Francisco, California: AK Press. 1994. Not copyrighted. Pages 2-3.]

“I would define a direct experience as an immediate situation or way of being that does not rely on the symbolic to understand and define our experience, and one that is not mediated by ideology, agenda, and personal baggage (that is, what is imposed upon us through various experiences and socializations). It is understandable that in our current reality, where the symbolic methods of understanding, communicating, and navigating through the world are almost all we have to operate with (the rules of engagement), that we temporarily consent to a certain degree of its control in our lives (explaining complex situations, communicating over long distance, making plans, traffic lights, etc). But the one realm where this is absolutely unnecessary, and in fact, where it is ultimately inhibiting, is our spiritual endeavors (and possibly sexual experience, which can deeply relate to spirituality as well, but that’s another essay). On a fundamental level, how we view ourselves and how we are connected within the context of our bodies, our minds, our relationship to others, and the world, inform how we move through the world and relate to others, and are therefore relevant to any anarchist discourse.” [Mia X. Kursions. Meditation on Mediation: Direct Experience as Spirituality. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Pages 3-4.]

“For me ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ marks the beginning of an idea which I was to pursue in The Rebel. It attempts to resolve the problem of suicide, as The Rebel attempts to resolve that of murder, in both cases without the aid of eternal values which, temporarily perhaps, are absent or distorted in contemporary Europe. The fundamental subject of ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate. Written fifteen years ago, in 1940, amid the French and European disaster, this book declares that even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism. In all the books I have written since, I have attempted to pursue this direction. Although ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ poses mortal problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.” [Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays. Justin O’Brien, translator. New York: Vintage Books imprint of Randon House, Inc. 1991. Page v.]

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.” [Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus” in Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays. Justin O’Brien, translator. New York: Vintage Books imprint of Random House, Inc. 1991. Page 3.]

“Nothing remains in the absurdist attitude which can help os answer the questions of out time. The absurdist metiiod, like that of systematic doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves os in a blind alley. But, like the method of doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, disclose a new field of investigation. Reasoning follows the same reflexive course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my own proclamation and I am compelled to believe, at least, in my own protest. The first, and only, datum that is furnished me, within absurdist experience, is rebellion. Stripped of all knowledge, driven to commit murder or consent to it, I possess this single datum which gains greater strength from the anguish that I suffer. Rebellion arises firom the spectacle of the irrational coupled with an unjust and incomprehensible condition. But its blind impetus clamours for order in the midst of chaos, and for unity in the very heart ofthe ephemeral. It protests, it demands, it insists that the outrage come to an end, that there be built upon rock what until now was written unceasingly upon the waters. Its aim is to transform. But to transform is to act, and to act, nowadays, is to kill while it still does not know if murder is legitimate. Hence it is absolutely necessary that rebellion derive its justifications from itself, since it has nothing else to derive them from. It must consent to study itself in order to learn how to act.” [Albert Camus. The Rebel. Herbert Read, translator. Bombay (Mumbai), India: The Times of India Press. 1954. Page 16.]

“In 1879 another King of Spain is assassinated and there is an abortive attempt on the life of the Czar. In 1881 the Czar is murdered by terrorist members of The Will ofthe People. Sofia Paovskaia, Jeliabov [Andrei Zhelyabov] and their friends ate hanged. In 1883 takes place the assassination of the Emperor of Germany, whose murderer is beheaded with an axe. In 1887 there are the executions of the Chicago martyrs and the congress of Spanish anarchists at Valencia where they issue the terrorist proclamation: ‘If society does not capitulate, vice and evil must perish, even if we must all perish with them.’ In France, the eighteen-nineties mark the culimnating point of what is called propaganda by action.” [Albert Camus. The Rebel. Herbert Read, translator. Bombay (Mumbai), India: The Times of India Press. 1954. Page 136.]

“… logic cannot be satisfied by an attitude which first demonstrates that murder is possible and then that it is impossible. For after having proved that the act of murder is at least a matter of indifference, absurdist analysis, in its most important deduction, finally condemns murder. The final conclusion of absurdist reasoning is, in fact, the repudiation of suicide and the acceptance of the desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe. Suicide would mean the end of this encounter, and absurdist reasoning considers that it could not consent to this without negating its own premises. According to absurdist reasoning, such a solution would be the equivalent of flight or deliverance. But it is obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is precisely life that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis. To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive.” [Albert Camus. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. Anthony Bower, translator. New York: Vintage Books imprint of Random House, Inc. 1956. Page 6.]

“My bedroom overlooks the main street of our district. Though it was a fine afternoon, the paving blocks were black and glistening. What few people were about seemed in an absurd hurry. First of all there came a family, going for their Sunday-afternoon walk; two small boys in sailor suits, with short trousers hardly down to their knees, and looking rather uneasy in their Sunday best; then a little girl with a big pink bow and black patent-leather shoes. Behind them was their mother, an enormously fat woman in a brown silk dress, and their father, a dapper little man, whom I knew by sight. He had a straw hat, a walking stick, and a butterfly tie. Seeing him beside his wife, I understood why people said he came of a good family and had married beneath him.” [Albert Camus. The Stranger. Stuart Gilbert, translator. New York: Vintage Books imprint of Random House, Inc. 1946. Page 15.]

“Yes, we must raise our voices. Up to this point, I have refrained from appealing to emotion. We are being torn apart by a logic of history which we have elaborated in every detail — a net which threatens to strangle us. It is not emotion which can cut through the web of a logic which has gone to irrational lengths, but only reason which can meet logic on its own ground. But I should not want to leave the impression… that any program for the future can get along without our powers of love and indignation. I am well aware that it takes a powerful prime mover to get men into motion and that it is hard to throw one’s self into a struggle whose objectives are so modest and where hope has only a rational basis — and hardly even that. But the problem is not how to carry men away; it is essential, on the contrary, that they not be carried away but rather that they be made to understand clearly what they are doing.

“To save what can be saved so as to open up some kind of future — that is the prime mover, the passion and the sacrifice that is required. It demands only that we reflect and then decide, clearly, whether humanity’s lot must be made still more miserable in order to achieve far-off and shadowy ends, whether we should accept a world bristling with arms where brother kills brother; or whether, on the contrary, we should avoid bloodshed and misery as much as possible so that we give a chance for survival to later generations better equipped than we are.

“For my part, I am fairly sure that I have made the choice. And, having chosen, I think that I must speak out, that I must state that I will never again be one of those, whoever they be, who compromise with murder, and that I must take the consequences of such a decision. The thing is done, and that is as far as I can go at present… However, I want to make clear the spirit in which this article is written.

“We are asked to love or to hate such and such a country and such and such a people. But some of us feel too strongly our common humanity to make such a choice. Those who really love the Russian people, in gratitude for what they have never ceased to be — that world leaven which Tolstoy and Gorky speak of — do not wish for them success in power politics, but rather want to spare them, after the ordeals of the past, a new and even more terrible bloodletting. So, too, with the American people, and with the peoples of unhappy Europe. This is the kind of elementary truth we are likely to forget amidst the furious passions of our time.

“Yes, it is fear and silence and the spiritual isolation they cause that must be fought today. And it is sociability and the universal intercommunication of men that must be defended. Slavery, injustice, and lies destroy this intercourse and forbid this sociability; and so we must reject them. But these evils are today the very stuff of history, so that many consider them necessary evils. It is true that we cannot “escape history,” since we are in it up to our necks. But one may propose to fight within history to preserve from history that part of man which is not its proper province. That is all I have to say here. The ‘point’ of this article may be summed up as follows:

“Modern nations are driven by powerful forces along the roads of power and domination. I will not say that these forces should be furthered or that they should be obstructed. They hardly need our help and, for the moment, they laugh at attempts to hinder them. They will, then, continue. But I will ask only this simple question: What if these forces wind up in a dead end, what if that logic of history on which so many now rely turns out to be a will o’ the wisp? What if, despite two or three world wars, despite the sacrifice of several generations and a whole system of values, our grandchildren — supposing they survive — find themselves no closer to a world society? It may well be that the survivors of such an experience will be too weak to understand their own sufferings. Since these forces are working themselves out and since it is inevitable that they continue to do so,there is no reason why some of us should not take on the job of keeping alive, through the apocalyptic historical vista that stretches before us, a modest thoughtfulness which, without pretending to solve everything, will constantly be prepared to give some human meaning to everyday life. The essential thing is that people should carefully weight the price they must pay…

“All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist, it will be a gain if it be clearly marked. Over the expanse of five continents throughout the coming years an endless strugle is going to be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle in which, granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success than that of the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.”

[Albert Camus. Neither Victims Nor Executioneers. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Pages 1-2.]

“[Albert] Camus himself never made a secret of his attraction towards anarchism. Anarchist ideas occur in his plays and novels, as for example, La Peste [The Plague], L’Etat de siège [The State of Siege] or Les Justes [The Just Ones]. He had known the anarchist Gaston Leval, who had written about the Spanish revolution, since 1945. Camus had first expressed admiration for revolutionary syndicalists and anarchists, conscientious objectors and all manner of rebels as early as 1938 whilst working as a journalist on the paper L’Alger Republicaine, according to his friend Pascal Pia.

“The anarchist Andre Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting in 1948 of the Cercle des Etudiants Anarchistes (Anarchist Student Circle) as a sympathiser who was familiar with anarchist thought.…

“Albert Camus’s book L’Homme Révolte (translated into English as The Rebel), published in 1951, marked a clear break between him and the Communist Party left. It was met with hostility by those who were members of The Communist Party or were fellow travelers. Its message was understood by anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists in France and Spain, however, for it openly mentions revolutionary syndicalism and anarchism and makes a clear distinction between authoritarian and libertarian socialism. The main theme is how to have a revolution without the use of terror and the employment of ‘Caesarist’ methods.…

“He ends [the book] with a call for the resurrection of anarchism. Authoritarian thought, thanks to three wars and the physical destruction of an elite of rebels, had submerged this libertarian tradition. But it was a poor victory, and a provisional one, and the struggle still continues.…

“Camus often used his fame or notoriety to intervene in the press to stop the persecution of anarchist militants or to alert public opinion. In the final year of his life Camus settled in the Provence village of Lourmarin. Here he made the acquaintance of Franck Creac’h. A Breton, born in Paris, self-taught, and a convinced anarchist, he had come to the village during the war to ‘demobilise’ himself. Camus employed him as his gardener and had the benefit of being able to have conversations with someone on the same wavelength. One of the last campaigns Camus was involved in was that of the anarchist Louis Lecoin who fought for the status of conscientious objectors in 1958. Camus was never to see the outcome to this campaign, as he died in a car crash on 1960, at the age of forty-six.”

[Organise! Camus, Albert and the Anarchists. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Pages 1-3.]

“In [Albert] Camus’s view, all the historical attempts to revolt have failed until now: these rebellions have never delivered their goods. The French revolutionaries for instance turned out to be tyrants. That is why Camus gives in his essay a definition of what the true spirit of rebellion should be. Firstly, rebellion is simultaneously an act of acceptance and an act of refusal. ‘The Rebel’ says ‘no’ to any form of oppression but he also says ‘yes’ to himself and the valúes [values] that lie within him – ‘He stubbornly insists that there are certain things in him that are “worthwhile…” and which must be taken into consideration’ …. Secondly, the rebel is ready to die for his rights and dignity, and for the rights and dignity of all human beings. In this sense, rebellion is not an individualistic but an altruistic act.” [Richard Clouet, “The Rebel: The English Translation of Albert Camus’s L’Homme Révolté and the Expression of Hope and Despair.” Philologica canariensia. Numbers 8–9, 2002–2003. Pages 265-273.]

“In his [Albert Camus’] absurdist period, … Camus explicitly rejected existentialism. In the new and more mature philosophical position he developed in the works published just after the Second World War, Camus remained highly critical of existential thought, and though his rejection of existentialism was generally more implicit and indirect than it had been before, it was no less meaningful in relation to those issues that preoccupied him at the time.” [Richard Raskin, “Camus’s Critiques of Existentialism.” Minerva – An Internet Journal of Philosophy. Volume 5, 2001. Pages 156-165.]

“Albert Camus, as is well known, described as absurdity the unfathomable abyss that exists between man and the world, between the aspirations of the human spirit and the incapacity of the world to satisfy them. The absurdity, for him, lies neither in man nor in things, but in the impossibility of establishing any other relationship between them than that of strangeness.

“Every reader has nevertheless noticed that the hero of L’Etranger (The Outsider [or the Stranger]) practised an obscure kind of complicity with the world, compounded of resentment and fascination. This man’s relations with the objects around him are not in the least innocent; absurdity is constantly bringing about disappointment, withdrawal and rebellion.”

[Alain Robbe-Grillet, “Nature, Humanism and Tragedy.” New Left Review. Series I, number 31, May–June 1965. Pages 65-80.]

“Albert Camus (1913-60), a French writer of Algerian origin, has been widely acclaimed as a great litterateur. In an eventful and productive life, tragically cut short by a car accident, he published three novels, a collection of short stories, two philosophical works, as also several plays and essays. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957. No ivory tower intellectual, Camus actively participated in the epic political struggles and controversies of his time.

“Born in a working class family, he was a member of the Algerian Communist Party during 1935-37. He later played an important role in the Resistance movement against the Nazi Occupation of France. He steadfastly strove to secure a just French policy towards Algeria in the face of insurmountable odds. His political philosophy was formed in the crucible of the turmoil, which engulfed Europe in the middle decades of the twentieth century.”

[Mangesh Kulkarni, “Revolution Versus Revolt: Revisting Albert Camus’ The Rebel.” West Bengal Political Science Review. Volume II, numbers 1-2, January–December 1999. Pages 59-65.]

“… I want to introduce a materialistic pantheism as an ontological basis for radically antifascist forms of existence.

“What antifascist forms of existence need is an ontology understanding life as a diverse unity of interconnected and interacting forces. An ontology that does not see reality in opposites and hierarchies, but as a web of forms and energies of equal value.

“Perhaps most importantly, spirit and matter must not be regarded as contradicting principles. The dichotomy of spirit and matter provides the foundation for the individualistic philosophical systems of modernity (both rationalism and idealism). These systems have to be transcended. We have to realize that it was only by a violent anthropocentric act that spirit got separated from matter.

“Matter is not what it is thought of in the spirit-matter-dichotomy. It is not dead but alive, and it does not stand in opposition to spirit but contains spiritual forces. It is the life-spending principle that has created all, spirit included, or simply: it is the source of life. Materialism is a requirement for an uncompromising antidualistic world-view. Not the supposed prehistoric murder of the father is of interest, but the murders of the mother in the history of civilization by the hands of patriarchal powers trying to negate the creative principle. If we don?t want to deny where we came from, what created us, what unites us with all that is, then we have to learn to understand matter in its creative dimensions. Only then we will no longer have to pay the price of destroying creation in its diversity.

Matter is no metaphysical principle, but the concrete principle of life itself. (A principle that can only be denied by abstract Cartesian skepticism.)“

“Transindividualistic thought means essentially to put the ontological status of the individual in perspective. This notion is of crucial importance in any attempt to overcome the prevailing ontological paradigms (paradogmas). Realizing the transindividual character of reality is the first step out of the individualistic ideologies of rationalism and idealism. But it is not enough to get us to where I believe to find the aspired antiindividualistic world-view: in a radical pantheism.

“Transindividualistic thought leads us away from the secular individualistic ideologies of modernity, but it doesn’t automatically lead us to pantheism. For an ontological transindividualism without a materialistic commitment doesn?t automatically overcome idealism hostile to matter. If the spirit remains the only essential truth, then the human being remains essentially a purely spiritual being, trapped in its body and either standing in total opposition to matter (absolute idealism) or being far superior in the hierarchy of creation (eschatological idealism); body/matter are, in the best case, inferior forms of reality, in the worst case, the diabolical cause of worldly suffering, and in any case, second to human spirit, without worth or value compared to it, and only an obstacle in the pursuit of truth. Without a materialistic frame, descending into the unity of reality will have to remain an individual attempt of rescue or escape from the world of material suffering. Platonism, Gnosis, Manichaeism, or the Christian Mysticism of the late German middle ages represent the hard varieties of this school of thought, the philosophical systems of a Plotinus, Giordano Bruno, or Nicholas of Cusa, the soft.”

[Anil Vem. Two Mystic Materialist Sketches. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Pages 5-6.]

“… in my (sometimes) humble opinion, the “spiritual” thinker who has the most relevance to anarchist theory (by virtue of the fact that he was an anarchist!) is J. Krishnamurti, an iconoclastic ‘anti-guru’ from India who devoted his life to burying the putrid corpse of religion, superstitious spiritualism, and every other mystification that impairs the experience of being alive.…

“It should be self-evident that … [the] exceedingly individualistic approach to cultural deprogramming — with its rejection of formalized traditions, ‘secure’ structures, and the extreme authoritarianism of the guru/disciple relationship — is not for the servile, weak-minded, or dependency oriented. If ‘spirituality’ (to use a very loaded term) is to be equated with self-awareness, then it’s a pursuit that’s going to involve acknowledging some very hard truths about what’s really going on in our mangled, repressed psyches. It’s going to entail a confrontation with all the psychological buffers and insulations we erect to prevent such a frightening procedure of self-inquiry from occurring — the sophisticated mechanisms with which we deflect exploration of our inner lives. It’s an incredibly arduous, difficult task — as socialized animals saddled with centuries of authoritarian conditioning — to unmask our in grained predilections towards submission and critically enter into conflict with the powerful patterns of self-mistrust that have become part of our psychic structures.”

[Anonymous. There is no Authority but Yourself: Reclaiming Krishnamurti for Anarchy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Pages 4 and 7.]

“Throughout 2006 and 2007, I researched a variety of activist collectives in Montreal. I closely participated in two different collectives, a Zapatista solidarity collective and an activist house cooperative, in addition to interviewing and interacting with activists from a variety of other collectives that collaborated with and/or overlapped with these two. Some groups, like the Zapatista collective I treat in detail below, were activist collectives with an explicitly anarchist, anti-capitalist orientation. Others, like the house co-op I also focus on, were rather unified around a more liberal, environmentalist agenda. However, both of these groups, like the others I researched, shared a commitment to ‘radical democracy’ in their internal processes and as an ultimate, broader goal for society at large.…

“As a member of these two collectives, I interacted with many other activist collectives that overlapped with my own.…

[Erica Lagalisse, “The Limits of ‘Radical Democracy’: A Gender Analysis of ‘Anarchist’ Activist Collectives in Montreal.” Altérités. Volume 7, number 1, 2010. Pages 18-38.]

“Identity Politicians (IPs) are a particular kind of leftist who use the spectre1 of an identity-category (gender, race, sexuality, etc) as a lever to obtain power. In the sense discussed here, they should not be considered coterminous either with groups of people oppressed by identity categories, or even that subset who prioritise identity as a key site of struggle. Not all women, Black people, People of Colour (POC), or members of other specifiable groups are IPs; not all feminists, anti-racists, or even separatists are IPs. Racism, sexism and other oppressions along identity axes are sociologically real, and not every person involved in the struggle against such oppressions is an IP.

“Intersectionality – the recognition of multiple forms or axes of oppression, with complex interacting effects – is an effective theoretical response to the problems of Identity Politics, but there have clearly been difficulties putting it into practice. In identity-linked movements, some people use intersectionality as a way to avoid the idea of principal contradiction, although occasionally in practice, people who claim to be intersectional end up treating one or two oppressions as primary. Nevertheless, the fact that not all identity-related theories or movements need to be treated as Identity Politics does not mean that the influence of Identity Politicians is trivial. The writers and activists discussed here not only exist, but their ideas and practices are often insidious and unfortunately widespread. Recognizing the importance and necessity of countering that deleterious influence is my motivation for writing this essay.…

“Against this prevalent form of disguised vanguardism, let us hold forth the beacon of a world without spectres. Structural oppressions are sociologically real, but their roots can be traced deeper, to the structures of statism and representation. If we must theorise a primary contradiction, then let it be the contradiction between ourselves – as unique ones, forces of becoming, irreducible and unrepresentable beings – and the entire regime of spectres and alienation. Let us dispense with boundary policing, and instead nurture affinities across social categories. It is in rediscovering the level of immanent, abundant becoming, the joy of life, the flow of desire and direct connection, that we destroy the power which spectres exercise over us. Let us start always from this joy, share it with others when we can, and use it as a weapon to break down common sense, to rebuild and redefine community, to replace the graveyard of spectres with a world of life. May the alien privileges of spectres and the alien oppressions they engender never come between a unique one, a free being, and its immanent becoming.”

[Lupus Dragonowl. Against Identity Politics: Spectres, Joylessness, and the contours of ressentiment. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Pages 3 and 18.]

“… improvisation has obvious resonances with common understandings of anarchism, according to which the relations between people should not be mediated through the external mechanism of the state. Here, however, I want to complicate this a little by suggesting that the state is not simply an external mechanism, but is rather a particular mode of thought that can immanently (or ‘internally’) mediate relationships. It, too, is a process and not a thing …. Contemporary anarchism is therefore not simply directed against the geopolitical institution of the state, but against statist forms of organization on all levels, including the ‘micropolitical’ relations of power internal to anarchist groups. To this end, I want to offer adopts four ‘core concepts’ of anarchism: freedom and non-domination, mutuality, a commitment to difference and prefiguration and open-endedness. Each of these – and the problems anarchists may face in seeking them – can be explicated further through a consideration of musical improvisation.” [David M. Bell, “Improvisation as anarchist organization.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, November 2014. Pages 1009-1030.]

“The article considers several working anarchies in the networked environment, and whether they offer a model for improving on the persistent imperfections of markets and states. I explore whether these efforts of peer mutualism in fact offer a sufficient range of capabilities to present a meaningful degree of freedom to those who rely on the capabilities it affords, and whether these practices in fact remain sufficiently nonhierarchical to offer a meaningful space of noncoercive interactions.…

“By ‘working anarchy,’ … or mutualism, I mean voluntaristic associations that do not depend on direct or delegated power from the state, and in particular do not depend on delegated legitimate force that takes a proprietary form and is backed by shared social understandings of how one respects or complies with another’s proprietary claim.”

[Yochai Benkler, “Practical Anarchism: Peer Mutualism, Market Power, and the Fallible State.” Politics & Society. Volume 41, number 2, 2013. Pages 213-251.]

“The notion of the commons has long been understood as referring to spaces for open participation of regular people, and is thus both a concept and practice with an affinity to anarchism.… While anarchist commons tend to focus on open access principles, they also tend to provide basic membership principles articulated in a basis of unity, although these tend to fall outside any legal framework. The anarchist commons are spaces owned and managed in common by anarchists and anti-authoritarians, and sometimes open to outsiders ….

“… An economic-determinist model of the commons must be extended to consider this diversity of struggles. In this paper we will describe our methodology, situate anarchist theories of the commons within the literature, and provide a mapping of the Montreal anarchist commons as a case study. We will argue that the range of anti-authoritarian groups and networks in Montreal addressing several disparate but connected struggles are engaged in building the anarchist commons in a loose grouping of spaces, networks and collectives that are united by a shared political culture ….”

[Collectif de Recherche sur l’Autonomie Collective, “The anarchist commons.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, November 2014. Pages 879-900.]

“Dual power is a situation in which two or more social forces assert power over the same territory and fight for it outside of the official political institutions (elections, parties, etc.). A dual power struggle poses a revolutionary or potentially revolutionary challenge to state power and it prefigures a new society in some way. It does not aim to create alternative institutions that live alongside the existing state, but to replace the existing institutions, through a great clash if necessary. Dual power implies civil war between the haves and the have-nots. The most famous example of a dual power situation is the conflict between the Provisional Government versus the Soviets in Russia in 1917 (Lenin’s description of that struggle is where the term comes from). However, there have been numerous examples of dual power situations in the U.S., including the American Revolution, ‘Bleeding Kansas’ in 1854, the Civil War, and Birmingham in 1963 in the midst of the civil rights demonstrations.

“A dual power strategy works by participation in those mass struggles and organizations that a cadre believes can bring about a dual power situation. No revolutionary organization can create a dual power situation; to believe one can is vanguardism. Dual power comes about through the struggles of the great masses of people to overthrow their rulers, like in Tunisia or Egypt. The task of a cadre organization is to determine, through study and debate, which struggles have the best potential to create a dual power situation, and then to participate in them to try to strengthen them and make them as radical as possible.”

[Joel Olson, “Movement, Cadre, and Dual Power.” Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. Volume 13, number 1, fall 2011. Pages 33-38.]

“Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.… Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property—rights that people possess naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used force—actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud.

“Most people habitually believe in and live by this code of ethics. Libertarians believe this code should be applied consistently— and specifically, that it should be applied to actions by governments as well as by individuals. Governments should exist to protect rights, to protect us from others who might use force against us. When governments use force against people who have not violated the rights of others, then governments themselves become rights violators. Thus libertarians condemn such government actions as censorship, the draft, price controls, confiscation of property, and regulation of our personal and economic lives.”

[David Boaz. Libertarianism: A Primer. New York: The Free Press imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1997. Pages 2-3.]

“In the late 1940s, I went to New York City, fresh from college, to study with Ludwig von Mises, the intrepid Austrian scholar who had, thirty years before in 1920, fully explained the inevitability of the eventual collapse of the socialist economies. The socialists had sent the celebrated Polish economist Oskar Lange into the lists against him, and while Mises clearly won the encounter on points, such was the emotional appeal of communism’s promise to set right the alleged iniquities of a capitalist order that Lange was lionized and Mises became something of a pariah.

“It was a dark hour for the libertarians, and for Mises, their unanimously acknowledged intellectual godfather. In those days libertarian ideas were considered not just unfashionable but pernicious. Mises’s place in the public consciousness, if he had one at all, was in socialist demonology. He was teaching part-time at the Graduate School of Business Administration at New York University because that was the only job he could get. His distinguished student, F.A. Hayek, who would win a Nobel prize in 1975, had been turned down by the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago and a number of other institutions. Hayek had finally found a place at Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought after an obscure Midwestern foundation, realizing that libertarian scholars were becoming extinct, had arranged to pay his stipend.”

[Richard Cornuelle, “The Power and Poverty of Libertarian Thought.” The Newsletter of PEGS. Volume 5, number 1, winter 1995. Pages 34-38.]

“It was … the Levellers and particularly John Locke in seventeenth-century England who transformed classical natural law into a theory grounded on methodological and hence political individualism. From the Lockean emphasis on the individual as the unit of action, as the entity who thinks, feels, chooses, and acts, stemmed his conception of natural law in politics as establishing the natural rights of each individual. It was the Lockean individualist tradition that profoundly influenced the later American revolutionaries and the dominant tradition of libertarian political thought in the revolutionary new nation. It is this tradition of natural-rights libertarianism upon which the present volume attempts to build.…

“The myriad of post-Locke and post-Leveller natural-rights theorists made clear their view that these rights stem from the nature of man and of the world around him. A few strikingly worded examples: nineteenth-century German-American theorist Francis Lieber, in his earlier and more libertarian treatise, wrote: ‘The law of nature or natural law … is the law, the body of rights, which we deduce from the essential nature of man.’ And the prominent nineteenth-century American Unitarian minister, William Ellery Charming: ‘All men have the same rational nature and the same power of conscience, and all are equally made for indefinite improvement of these divine faculties and for the happiness to be found in their virtuous use.’ And Theodore Woolsey, one of the last of the systematic natural rights theorists in nineteenth-century America: natural rights are those ‘which, by fair deduction from the present physical, moral, social, religious characteristics of man, he must be invested with … in order to fulfill the ends to which his nature calls him.’”

[Murray N. Rothbard. The Ethics of Liberty. New York and London: New York University Press. 2002. Pages 21-23.]

“The present paper defends the position of libertarian centrism, or libertarian purity …, or plumb line libertarianism, vis-à-vis its two competitors for the libertarian mantle: left wing libertarianism and right wing libertarianism ….

“It is easy to see how libertarianism stems from conservative roots. There are members of the Old Right mentioned by Rockwell such as Albert Jay Nock, John T. Flynn, Garrett Garrett, H.L. Mencken. There is also Ayn Rand. But Gabriel Kolko, W.A. Williams, Ronald Radosh, on the left, too, have made major contributions to libertarianism.

“I can’t read anyone out of the libertarian movement. That has not been my purpose in this essay, nor is it within my power to do any such thing. However, in my assessment, both right wing and left wing libertarianism are missing the essence of this philosophy.

“… What I am talking about is what I see as a burgeoning schism within the libertarian movement, between left and right wing libertarians. Each is moving toward the position, as I see it, of excluding the other, or removing themselves from the other. That would be a tragic mistake. Both are in error in this regard.”

[Walter Block, “Libertarianism is Unique and Belongs Neither to the Right nor the Left: A Critique of the Views of Long, Holcombe, and Baden on the Left, Hoppe, Feser, and Paul of the Right.” Journal of Libertarian Studies. Volume 22, 2010. Pages 127-170.]

“How are we to tell Libertarian Centrism apart from radical anarchism, Republican-lite conservatism, or conspiracy theorism? I offer a few thoughts.

“Libertarian centrism is about real politics. We libertarian centrists do not agree about everything. Here are litmus questions. The fact that an issue is a litmus test does not make it an important issue. Some important issues are not litmus tests. Warning: Some centrists will disagree with some of my answers. What do most Libertarian centrists believe?

“We are 100% pro-choice, because government has no valid business running women’s lives for them.

“All Americans are entitled to equality in marriage, adoption, divorce, and access to military service.

“Slavery was the American Holocaust. Confederate apologists are rightly grouped with Holocaust deniers, and are shunned by all decent people.

“Thomas Jefferson correctly wrote: ‘That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.’ It is only through government, limited government, that men and women will stay free.

“The so-called ‘States Rights’ doctrine, claiming that states may keep African-Americans from voting and women from having abortions, is un-American. Politicians who say ‘leave it up to the states’ are an opposite of libertarian.

“While there have been conspiracies, the incoherent mutterings of conspiracy theorists, including 9/11 truthers, central banking foes, and 16ᵗʰ amendment deniers, offer nothing to the Libertarian political movement. They should be politely ignored.”

[Editor, “Libertarian Centrism.” Liberty for America: Journal of the Libertarian Political Movement. Volume 1, number 4, September 2008. Page 2]

“The radical libertarian perspective enables us to see another panoply of issues in a different light. I refer here to the question of activist courts, legislatures, presidents, states rights, decentralization, subsidiarity, etc.…

“… there is something profoundly wrong with labeling as criminal virtually an entire society. This is all too similar to the leftist complaint that ‘we are all guilty’ for the sins of modernity. If so, there are some who are much more responsible for social failings than others, so much so that it is only the former who should be considered guilty, and the latter as victims. This is, further, all too similar to the invalid idea that ’we are all’ the state, or that ‘Government Are Us.’ Not only have we already rejected this notion as not compatible with radical libertarianism, it is to be further (rejected) in that if we are all guilty, then, none of us really is.”

[Walter Block, “Radical Libertarianism: Applying Libertarian Principles to Dealing with the Unjust Government, Part I.” Reason Papers. Volume 27, fall 2004. Pages 117-133.]

“Mud pies are worth far less than cherry pies, even if an identical amount of labor goes in to the creation of the two ‘products.’ A gold nugget lying on the ground in plain sight, big as a fist, is highly valuable, even though it takes no virtually no labor to pick it up. So much for Marxist class theory. But libertarian class analysis is entirely another matter. In this case, the exploiter is not the employer, nor the exploitee the employee. Very much to the contrary, the ‘bad guy’ is the thief or murderer, and the ‘good guy’ is the victim of this aggression against nonaggressors.…

“A word is needed about free speech. The right to say exactly what you please is something near to the very core of libertarianism. This philosophy, indeed, takes a rather extremist position on free speech, championing such things as libel, blackmail, even incitement to violence. And yet, in our analysis, we appear to be not only questioning this stance, but also actively attacking the free speech rights of Marxists, statists, and other opponents of libertarianism.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. In the viewpoint being put forth here, communists are free to express themselves in any private venue they wish. However, when they take on a position at, say, a state university, now the expression of their ideas takes on a very different and far more ominous perspective. As part and parcel of the apparatus of the state, they are now not merely expressing an opinion; rather, they are now actively aiding and abetting in the rights violations of the multitudes of the people.”

[Walter Block, “Radical Libertarianism: Applying Libertarian Principles to Dealing with the Unjust Government, Part II.” Reason Papers. Volume 28, spring 2006. Pages 85-109.]

“My argument may convince some readers that limited government is necessary to preserve liberty—to protect citizens from being taken over and ruled by a predatory government much worse for their liberty than a government they design themselves. Others may believe, despite the arguments presented here, that libertarian anarchy remains a feasible and desirable alternative. In any event, my arguments point to a different direction for the debate between libertarian anarchists and libertarian minarchists. Both groups agree that government is not necessary to produce public goods or to correct externalities or to get people to cooperate for the public good— that private parties can undertake voluntarily and more effectively all of the activities undertaken in the public sector. The libertarian issue regarding government is whether a society with no government has the means to prevent predators from establishing one by force.” [Randall G. Holcombe, “Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable.” The Independent Review. Volume VIII, number 3, winter 2004. Pages 325-342.]

“Geoism (also called ‘Georgism’ after its founder Henry George) is the most esoteric form of anarchism at this time. Only a handful of people call themselves geoanarchists – most geoists are minarchist rather than anarchist. However, geoism has an influence on other schools, particularly mutualist anarchism and the environmentalist schools. Minarchists tend to like the ‘single-tax’ ground rent idea as arguably a non-aggressive way to fund their night-watchman state. Environmentalists often see ground rent as a solution to the tragedy of the commons and a way to make mining and logging firms pay society for their exploitation of resources and pollution.” [Hogeye Bill (Bill Orton). Against Authority. Version 1.1. Fayetteville, Arkansas: Ozarkia.net. 2011. Page 17.]

“Libertarian capitalism involves protection of the freedom of individuals and their property, as long as they do not use violence against other individuals. It advocates for freedom in the field of private life and the related choices, as well as for freedom of market transactions, giving priority to spontaneous order. One of the views of libertarianism is minarchism, in which the government is to restrict itself to protect the rights of individuals and ensure their safety (the State as a ‘night watchman’). The other position is represented by anarcho-capitalists who want to replace the State with private security agencies, and courts competing in the open market of services.” [Małgorzata Płaszczyca, “The Ethical Aspect of the Relationship of the Individual and the State in the Libertarian Perspective of Murray N. Rothbard.” Annales. Ethics in Economic Life. Volume 17, number 4, 2014. Pages 23-34.]

“There are … arguments, totally devastating to the minarchist position, which its advocates have not even acknowledged, let alone dealt with. One is the argument from world government. If individuals in a given country are so woebegone, if markets for defense, adjudication, etc., are so impossible, that a government with compulsory monopoly powers is required to offset these failures, then this state of affairs applies, as well, to the international situation. That is, if a man in Montana and one in Louisiana cannot relate to each other contractually for all their needs, including private defense firms compatible with anarchism, then this applies as well to men in Vancouver and Moscow. In other words, if national governments are justified, why, when, so is world government, and for the same reason. If anarchism within a country is unacceptable, then so, too, is global anarchism; e.g., lack of a world government.” [Walter Block, “Anarchism and Minarchism; No Rapprochement Possible: Reply to Tibor Machan.” Journal of Libertarian Studies. Volume 22, 2011. Pages 741-770.]

“… the idea of minarchism is that the ideally good government would literally ‘govern least’ in the sense that all and only the bad guys would be apprehended and dealt with in the right way, and the state wouldn’t dream about stepping over that boundary. But it turns out that any institution that could both do that and do it without violating anybody’s rights isn’t the state anyway – it’s a large or (more likely) a large set of small private protective agencies and insurance companies.” [Jan Narveson, “Minarchism.” Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics. Volume 2, 2003. Pages 1-14.]

“The night-watchman state of classical liberal theory, limited to the functions of protecting all its citizens against violence, theft, and fraud, and to the enforcement of contracts, and so on, appears to be redistributive. We can imagine at least one social arrangement intermediate between the scheme of private protective associations and the night-watchman state. Since the nightwatchman state is often called a minimal state, we shall call this other arrangement the ultraminimal state. An ultraminimal state maintains a monopoly over all use of force except that necessary in immediate self-defence, and so excludes private (or agency) retaliation for wrong and exaction of compensation; but it provides protection and enforcement services only to those who purchase its protection and enforcement policie., People who don’t buy a protection contract from the monopoly don’t get protected. The minimal (night-watchman) state is equivalent to the ultraminimal state conjoined with a (clearly redistributive) Friedmanesque voucher plan, financed from tax revenues. Under this plan all people, or some (for example, those in need), are given tax-funded vouchers that can be used only for their purchase of a protection policy from the ultraminimal state.…

“A proponent of the ultraminimal state may seem to occupy an inconsistent position, even though he avoids the question of what makes protection uniquely suitable for redistributive provision. Greatly concerned to protect rights against violation, he makes this the sole legitimate function of the state; and he protests that all other functions are illegitimate because they themselves involve the violation of rights. Since he accords paramount place to the protection and non-violation of rights, how can he support the ultraminimal state, which would seem to leave some persons’ rights unprotected or ill protected? How can he support this in the name of the non-violation of rights? …

“In contrast to incorporating rights into the end state to be achieved, one might place them as side constraints upon the actions to be done: don’t violate constraints. The rights of others determine the constraints upon your actions.…

“The claim that the proponent of the ultraminimal state is inconsistent, we now can see, assumes that he is a ‘utilitarian of rights.’ It assumes that his goal is, for example, to minimize the weighted amount of the violation of rights in the society, and that he should pursue this goal even through means that themselves violate people’s rights. Instead, he may place the non-violation of rights as a constraint upon action, rather than (or in addition to) building it into the end state to be realized. The position held by this proponent of the ultraminimal state will be a consistent one if his conception of rights holds that your being forced to contribute to another’s welfare violates your rights, whereas someone else’s not providing you with things you need greatly, including things essential to the protection of your rights, does not itself violate your rights, even though it avoids making it more difficult for someone else to violate them. (That conception will be consistent provided it does not construe the monopoly element of the ultraminimal state as itself a violation of rights.) That it is a consistent position does not, of course, show that it is an acceptable one.”

[Robert Nozick. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford, England, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999. Pages 26-30.]

“The complete principle of distributive justice would say simply that a distribution is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution.

“A distribution is just if it arises from another (just) distribution by legitimate means. The legitimate means of moving from one distribution to another are specified by the principle of justice in transfer. The legitimate first ‘moves’ are specified by the principle of justice in acquisition. Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just. The means of change specified by the principle of justice in transfer, preserve justice. As correct rules of inference are truth preserving, and any conclusion deduced via repeated application of such rules from only true premisses is itself true, so the means of transition from one situation to another specified by the principle of justice in transfer are justice preserving, and any situation actually arising from repeated transitions in accordance with the principle from a just situation is itself just. The parallel between justice-pre- serving transformations and truth-preserving transformations illuminates where it fails as well as where it holds.”

[Robert Nozick, “Distributive Justice.” Philosophy & Public Affairs. Volume 3, number 1, autumn 1973. Pages 45-126.]

“… methodological individualism is conducive both to the libertarian anarchism of Robert Nozik ….” [Paul Auerbach, “On Socialist Optimism.” New Left Review. Series I, number 192, March–April 1992. Pages 5-35.]

“Can anarchy be efficient? This paper argues that for reasons of efficiency, rational, wealth-maximizing agents may actually choose statelessness over government in some cases. Where markets are sufficiently thin or where government is prohibitively costly, anarchy is the efficient mode of social organization. If total social wealth under conditions of relatively lower levels of trade is not substantially smaller than it is under conditions of relatively higher levels of trade, the cost of government may exceed the social benefits it provides. Likewise, if the cost of a state is sufficiently large, even substantial differences in social wealth under these two scenarios may prove too small to justify the formation of government from a cost-benefit perspective. The framework I provide explains the persistence of anarchy in two major areas where we tend to observe it: among primitive societies and at the global level.…

“… it is … possible to distinguish two types of efficient anarchy: (1) … anarchy … in which despite the presence of a substantial gap between social wealth in the higher vs. lower trade equilibrium, government is too costly to justify its emergence, and (2) … anarchy … in which even though government may be inexpensive to create, the difference between social wealth in the higher and lower trade equilibrium is so small as to make the state inefficient on cost-benefit grounds. At least theoretically then, these are situations in which statelessness is socially optimal.Asociety of rationally self-interested agents operating in either environment would thus (rationally) choose anarchy over government.”

[Peter T. Leeson, “Efficient anarchy.” Public Choice. Volume 130, number 1–2, 2006. Pages 41-53.]

“Vengeance isn’t an internally generated impulse. Vengeance is a response. It’s a response to something that somebody does to you that harms you somehow and that you think is wrong. And while emotion does enter into it, often, so does calculation. Vengeance is really just criminal self-help where the purpose is mainly getting even, not getting compensated.

“Is that irrational? Not necessarily. If honor is a high value for you, as it is for me, getting even may be more important than getting compensated. Unavenged wrongs can rankle even to the point of physical distress. But in many cases, whether you’re touchy about your honor or not, getting compensated isn’t possible anyway — for reasons previously discussed. That doesn’t mean you have to let the bastard get off scot free.…

“… the history at least shows that criminal self-help as vengeance is part of the anarchist tradition.

“Criminal self-help has another advantage over resort to the law. You retain your autonomy and possibly even have an opportunity for creativity. If you go to the police, that’s all you can do. Whatever happens after that, if anything does, is out of your hands. You may even be disadvantaged if you later resort to private retaliation because you have, in advance, notified the police that you are a suspect if something happens to your enemy. If, on the other hand, you go in for do-it-yourself justice right from the get-go, you are at least self-sufficient.”

[Bob Black. “Wild Justice”: Crime as an Anarchist Source of Social Order. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 10.]

“… the social revolution, as well as the free society which emerges through this struggle, will take on many forms within the general parameters of direct democracy and socialism. Certain regions, or even certain industries, will come to organize themselves along lines which are consistent with the basic notions of anarchism and which best meet the challenges of their particular circumstances. Therefore, we do not see the slight ideological differences between the various anti-authoritarian-socialist organizations as problematic inasmuch as we view them as healthy differences within a united yet diverse movement.” [The Black Heart Anarchist Collective, David Van Deseun, & Lady. The Road Not Taken: Towards The Creation Of Regional North American Anarchist Federations & The Adoption Of An Organizational Model From Which a Broad Based Strategy Can Be Carried Out. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2001. Page 9.]

“In many a romantic vision of the state dominating the aggressive nature of human beings, the yolk of anarchy stirs. But in our postmodern era, such a vision commits itself to a fundamental legal-epistemological dilemma: once you know the law, you cannot go back to a ‘no law’ space.… [I]t is the view of this discussion that such a theoretical purview misses several crucial features of the psyche of the contemporary Australian law revealed by Lacanian psychoanalysis.…

“The spectre of anarchy as crisis or boon is a properly structural phenomenon of modern legal systems. And in the contemporary Australian legal context, anarchy has a hidden place in the efforts of the High Court to effect legislative harmony. The discussion in this article proposes a speculative critique of law to the end of unearthing a philosophico-psychoanalytic theory of the dialectic of law and anarchy.”

[Daniel Hourigan, “Postmodern Anarchy in the Modern Legal Psyche: Law, Anarchy and Psychoanalytic Philosophy.” Griffith Law Review. Volume 21, number 2, 2012. Pages 330-348.]

“The valorisation of contingency involves a complex dynamic of the rise and refoundation of the contractual, the entanglement of contract with contagions both metaphoric and empirical, emblematic and historical. There is no binary between contract and contagion in what follows, even if there is at times juxtaposition.… That is to say: revisions of contract point to a reorganisation of uncertainty, as its displacement, or its valorisation, but for the most part as the re-imposition of necessity. This takes place in a dynamic of the crossing and restoration of limits, and in this a re-reading of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s discussion of the axiomatic is relevant.” [Angela Mitropoulos. Artpolitik: Social Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation. Creative Commons. Brooklyn, New York: Minor Compositions imprint of Autonomedia. 2012. Page 26.]

“Illegalism – The open embrace of criminality as an expression of anarchism, particularly individualist anarchism.…

“The illegalists were probably the most individual of anarchists while simultaneously maintaining the strongest bonds of association and communication, bonds required by the social activity of crime as insurrection. The illegalist milieu also illuminates a singular aspect of utopia, specifically that when the anarchist society is realized it will not be as a result of some esoteric will-to-liberty, or a Freudian erotic demiurge, nor as the result and sum of a labored economic equation, rather utopia will arise as a function of necessity, as banal as breakfast and as certain as summer heat.

“In the same manner that the illegalists turned to crime to survive and to speak, so society will turn to utopia to survive … and to speak. Of course, illegalist actions and theory are the stuff from which controversy is manufactured, not even ordinary criminals will condone crime publicly, and the Left, which has always asserted a monopoly on morality, was as outraged as the politicians and the press of the dominant society when anarchists started cracking safes and shooting bank tellers.…

“The very first illegalist, and the man who would provide the initial intellectul argument for anarchists as criminals was Clément Duval. He had served as a line soldier during the Franco-Prussian War and while unclear whether he participated in the Commune, he was wounded horribly by a Prussian mortar shell and subsequently contracted smallpox while recovering. He spent the next 10 years of his life recovering, including four years in hospital.”

[Paul Z. Simons. Illegalism: Why Pay for a Revolution on the Installment Plan…When You Can Steal One? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2013–2014. Pages 3-4.]

“When we affirm ourselves as Anarchists, we are against the system of domination. We fight against and object to the whole social order and all the laws that aid it. All laws have been and will be made to give juridical support to oppression and domination. If we are against the state we have to be strongly against the laws which entitle and justify its existence. Therefore, as Anarchists we are illegal because we are Anarchists, that is to say, by nature. Then for the much confusion that exists — a product of the liberal intoxication stalking again in these times — we must be very clear. And hence it should also be very clear that each time that this euphemism is used, when the term ‘illegalist anarchists’ pops up, it is making reference to ‘insurrectionalist Anarchism’, to its tactics, methods and logic, and doing so in a derogatory manner with bad intentions — pointing the finger from the pulpit, from the supposedly ‘legalistic anarchist’ stance. Or you could say from the denial of Anarchism. Here is a very timely moment for the maxim attributed to Camillo Berneri and Bob Black popularised in 1980s, in other words but without doubt words that certainly evoked the essence of the original sentence: ‘they are those anarchists, enemies of Anarchy.’” [Gustavo Rodriguez. Illegal Anarchism: The false dichotomy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Page 1.]

“… since there is a last resort, that offered by illegalism is the most dangerous of all, and it must be demonstrated that it brings in more than it costs, which is something quite exceptional. The illegalist anarchist who is thrown in prison has no favors to hope for as far as probation or reduction of his sentence. As the saying goes, his dossier is marked in red. But with this caveat, it must still be pointed out that in order to be seriously practiced illegalism demands a strongly tempered temperament, a sureness of oneself that doesn’t belong to everyone. As with all experiences in anarchist life that don’t march in step with the routines of daily existence, it is to be feared that the practices of illegalist anarchism take over the will and the thought of the illegalist to such an extent that it renders him incapable of any other activity, any other attitude. The same also goes for certain legal trades that spare those who practice it the need to be at a factory or an office.” [Émile Armand. Is the Illegalist Anarchist our Comrade? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1911. Page 6.]

“Parallel to the social, collectivist anarchist current there was an individualist one whose partisans emphasized their individual freedom and advised other individuals to do the same. Individualist anarchist activity spanned the full spectrum of alternatives to authoritarian society, subverting it by undermining its way of life facet by facet. The vast majority of individualist anarchists were caught in the trap of wage labor like their collectivist comrades and the proletariat in general: they had to work for peanuts or starve. Some individualists rebelled by withdrawing from the economy and forming voluntary associations to achieve self-sufficiency. Others took the route of illegalism, attacking the economy through the direct individual reappropriation of wealth. Thus theft, counterfeiting, swindling and robbery became a way of life for hundreds of individualists, as it was already for countless thousands of proletarians. The wave of anarchist bombings and assassinations of the 1890s (Auguste Vaillant, Ravachol, Emile Henry, Sante Caserio) and the practice of illegalism from the mid-1880s to the start of the First World War (Clément Duval, Pini, Marius Jacob, the Bonnot gang) were twin aspects of the same proletarian offensive, but were expressed in an individualist practice, one that complemented the great collective struggles against capital. The illegalist comrades were tired of waiting for the revolution. The acts of the anarchist bombers and assassins (‘propaganda by the deed’) and the anarchist burglars (‘individual reappropriation’) expressed their desperation and their personal, violent rejection of an intolerable society. Moreover, they were clearly meant to be exemplary, invitations to revolt.” [Doug Imrie. The “Illegalists.” Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1994–1995. Page 1.]

“… for Italy, for example, in the eighties, four thousand comrades ended up in prison. Many of these comrades came from Marxist-Leninist structures and according to their analysis they had been approaching a moment that was possibly capital’s ‘final crisis.’ But with the implosion of the clandestine groups and the massive repression—especially after the Moro kidnapping—mass arrests, many of the leadership decided that it wasn’t capitalism’s ‘final crisis,’ that the revolution had failed, that it was no longer the revolutionary moment and in fact they were facing multiple life sentences and it was time to begin to negotiate with the State. Let’s face it, the revolutionary project of the Marxist-Leninists is obviously not the same as an anarchist projectuality of revolution. As you know they had a vanguardist approach and obviously had no intention of destroying the means of production and the State.

“But while this struggle was taking place in [19]60s and [19]70s it was multiform, I mean it wasn’t just the clandestine groups that were carrying out the struggle but many actions took place in the sphere of illegality. These actions were carried out by very small groups of comrades and not claimed with acronyms.

“At the same time there was mass illegality. Comrades and young people, unemployed, students, just refused capitalism, a direct refusal, a taking of life: going to a rock concert but not paying en masse, going to a restaurant and not paying, going on buses and not paying. But we could say that, although there’s always been a polemic in the movement between anarchists and Leninists or Stalinists etc. there was somehow a composite situation of attack against the common enemy. But after the mass arrests the waters began to divide, and this is because it was impossible to carry on solidarity with a movement that was in a position of negotiation with the State.”

[Jean Weir. Tame Words from a Wild Heart. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Pages 7-8.]

“During chattel slavery, the white plantation owner had a privileged class of ‘house negroes,’ who did the master’s bidding at every turn, and united with the master to such a degree that they protected him from the other slaves, the ‘field negroes,’ and saw themselves as part of the master’s household. In return, they got better clothing, food and housing, and more privileges than the common field slaves. After a time, they did not even believe that they were slaves, but rather a butler or ‘manservant’ to this rich white man, who exploited Black labor, misery, and suffering for a profit, but treated them ‘fine.’ …

“Now, on the Progressive Plantation, this same kind of racist dynamic is in play. These progressive groups hire Black and other peoples of color, to use them as a foil against the Black/POC [people of Color] communities. They are hired as administrators or spokespersons for a majority white organization, and are to protect the master’s interest at all time, even if it conflicts with his/her own or their community’s best interests. These people have no power within the organization, and are expected to be a complete puppet, just for sake of a paycheck or for recognition from white people. Many settle for that. I refused to be one who did.

“It needs to also be recognized that the radical socialist and Anarchist movements have the same kinds of figures of color, who perform the same role. They are slaves on the white radical plantation, have no voice and tolerate all kinds of abuse, just to be part of the movement. It is an unhealthy, oppressive relationship, which reflects white domination of the movement. It is an example of ideological imperialism, the practice of which must be recognized and smashed within the Left. But what is ideological imperialism?

“We are talking about imperialism, a system of social, economic, political and economic domination by an external power elite, [could be another nation-state], in this instance a class of upper class white peoples organized into an activist movement using their superior financial, economic, and movement resources to dominate the entire social movement for justice, and control its militancy, goals, and strategies. This type of replication of oppression is a fundamental part of the establishment of the progressive plantation.

“It is absolutely essential that white progressive and radical activists become aware of these places, and the kinds of evils perpetrated within. There needs to be a struggle to either transform these places, or shut them down. We need to empower these POC within these places to fight these racists, and to not passively accept internal racism as the ‘norm.’

“Anarchists do not believe in revolutions by a Leninist party of elite revolutionary intellectuals ‘guiding’ (and then ruling over) the downtrodden masses. We believe that it is the people who will make the revolution, not so-called leaders. Yes, white Anarchists must work with peoples of color, but they must be active in their own communities as well, if they will build the diverse movement we all desire. We must challenge and educate against racism and undermine fascist ideology in white communities.”

[Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. The Progressive Plantation: racism inside white radical social change groups. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 14-15.]

“Let’s be logical, you are in power, taking advantage of it, and if you still need the head of yet another anarchist, take it, and when our day comes we will take this into account, and I have the firm hope that on that day the anarchists will rise to the occasion. They will be without pity, because never will they reach the number of your victims.…

“I busy myself with the chemistry and prepare what is needed for the day of battle, the day when the workers, conscious, will leave their torpor, their slump. Because it is time that this diabolic machination of the old world disappear, to give place to institutions where all will find a fate that is more fair, which does not exist but within anarchist communism.

“Because anarchy is the negation of all authority.

“And anarchy is the biggest social wound, because man is not free, and one must become free to do all that one wants, as long as one does not infringe upon the liberty of their fellow—of then one would become a despot in turn.”

[Clément Duval. Defense Speech. Michael Shreve, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 1.]

“Although I am not well known to you, you know that I am an anarchist. I am writing this letter to you to protest against the insanities that must have leaked out about me in particular and about the anarchists in general in all different kinds of newspapers which joined together to say, when I was arrested, that I was an ex-convict and had already been convicted of theft. As if you could call someone a thief who was a worker who had nothing but misery whereas for me theft does not exist except in the exploitation of man by man, in short, in the existence of everyone who lives at the expense of the producing class.” [Clément Duval. A Letter from Mazas Prison. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1886. Page 1.]

“In communism man contributes to society according to his abilities and his strengths; he should receive according to his needs. Men form groups and seek one another out according to their characters, abilities, and affinities, taking as a model the group that works best, rejecting vanity and stupid pride, looking only to do better than his comrade so that his comrade might do better himself.…

“With anarchist communism no more exploitation of man by man, no more of these sweat-eaters, no more of these mercenary, predatory, selfish, poisoning shopkeepers who falsify their products and their goods and degenerate the human race. You cannot deny it because you are even forced to watch over the sellers of children’s toys who poison them so young with their toys for poor, little, barely born creatures.”

[Clément Duval. Outrage: An Anarchist Memoir of the Penal Colony. Michael Shreve, translator. Oakland, California: PM Press. 2012. Page 14.]

“The Marxian socialists, both revolutionary and reformist, … accept the potentialities-for-Good-or-for-Evil platitude, since this platitude is based on a faith in Science and Progress which is shared by Marxists as well as conservatives, and is indeed still the basic assumption of Western thought. (In this respect, Marxism appears to be simply the most profound and consistent intellectual expression of this faith.) Since the Marxists make as a precondition of the beneficial use of Atomic Fission a basic change in present institutions, their position is not open to the objections noted just above. But if one looks deeper than the political level, the Marxist version of the platitude seems at the very least inadequate. It blunts our reaction to the present horror by reducing it to an episode in an historical schema which will ‘come out all right’ in the end, and thus makes us morally callous (with resulting ineffectuality in our actions against the present horror) and too optimistic about the problem of evil; and it ignores the fact that such atrocities as The Bomb and the Nazi death camps are right now brutalizing, warping, deadening the human beings who are expected to change the world for the better; that modern technology has its own anti-human dynamics which has proved so far much more powerful than the liberating effects the Marxist schema expects from it.” [Dwight Macdonald. The Responsibility of Peoples: And Other Essays in Political Criticism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, an imprint of Williamhouse-Regency Inc. 1974. Pages 106-107.]

“During the last war, I did not choose, at first because I was a revolutionary socialist of Trotskyist coloration, later because I was becoming, especially after the atom bomb, a pacifist. Neither of these positions now appear valid to me.” [Dwight Macdonald. The Responsibility of Peoples: And Other Essays in Political Criticism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, an imprint of Williamhouse-Regency Inc. 1974. Page 121.]

“… the most militarist, imperialist, anti-democratic, and reactionary nation in the world is precisely the one on which millions of Americans and Buropeans have fixed their aspirations {br world peace, national independence, democracy, and human progress. This is a Fact of Life today, and one that must be faced, whether one is a liberal, a Marxist socialist, a conservative, or, as in the case of the present writer, an anarchist and pacifist. The way to face it, in my opinion, is to tell the truth about USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics], without suppression and without compromise. If there is a chance of avoiding World War III, it must be based on truth and not on lies. And certainly not on The Big Lie.” [Dwight Macdonald. The Responsibility of Peoples: And Other Essays in Political Criticism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, an imprint of Williamhouse-Regency Inc. 1974. Page 198.]

“If the present tendency of history works out its logic unchecked, then in the USSR we have the image of the future society. I do not know of a single party or movement of any size in the world today that is working to check this tendency in the only way I think it can be checked: through changing our present social structure in a libertarian socialist direction.…

“… The Wobblies (IWW [Industrial Workers of the World]) have been even more completely eclipsed: before World War I, they were a major force in American labor, leading strikes involving hundreds of thousands of industrial workers, preaching (and practicing) an uncompromising class-war doctrine based on a libertarian, practically anarchist, philosophy. Today they are almost extinct. I cannot here go into the reasons for this depressing evolution — though it is interesting to note, in connection with the section of this article devoted to the question of war, that the first world was unquestionably was the greatest factor. American radicalism was making great strides right up to 1914; the war was the rock on which it shattered.…

“… Since I do not see in history the dialectical progressive pattern [Karl] Marx found there, and so can see a number of possible alternatives at any given point in history, Bureaucratic Collectivism does not appear to me (as it does to Marxists and to Marxists-turned-inside-out like James Burnham) the sole and inevitable successor to capitalism. Libertarian socialism may be another alternative at certain times and places under certain conditions. Therefore, I do not draw the hopeless conclusion [Leon] Trotsky, for instance, does as to the future if Bureaucratic Collectivism is historically ‘viable.’ All that one can say at present, and it is not precisely cheerful, is that Socialism has not materialized and Bureaucratic Collectivism has.”

[Dwight Macdonald. The Root Is Man. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1946. Page 24-25, 35, and 37.]

“The most curious article yet printed by NR [National Review is a seven-page feature called “The Strange Case of Dr. Dooley,” which is about a Connecticut psychiatrist who recently pleaded guilty to having had sexual relations with various young boys he had been treating. This might be expected in the Daily News or in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, but why in a political weekly? Aside from the fact it all happened near Lakeville, Conn., the [William F.] Buckley tribe’s native habitat (but that explanation seems too amateurish—even for the NR), the only discernible reasons are that Dr. Dooley claimed his pederasty was therapeutic and that his lawyer and certain other people supported this exculpation on the grounds that his methods had ‘worked,’ i.e., had improved the psychological health of his young patients.” [Dwight Macdonald, “On the Horizon: Scrambled Eggheads on the Right.” Commentary. Volume 21, April 1956. Pages 367-373.]

“The historical reasons for the growth of Mass Culture since the early 1800’s are well known. Political democracy and popular education broke down the old upper-class monopoly of culture. Business enterprise found a profitable market in the cultural demands of the newly awakened masses, and the advance of technology made possible the cheap production of books, periodicals, pictures, music, and furniture, in sufficient quantities to satisfy this market. Modern technology also created new media such as the movies and television which are specially well adapted to mass manufacture and distribution.” [Dwight Macdonald, “A Theory of Mass Culture.” Diogenes. Volume 1, number 3, summer 1953.]

“We have … become skilled at consuming High Culture when it has been stamped PRIME QUALITY by the proper authorities, but we lack the kind of sophisticated audience that supported the achievements of the classic avant-garde, an audience that ran appreciate and discriminate on its own.

“For this more difficult enterprise, we shall need what we very we may not get for all our four million college population cultural community. The term is pompous but I can think of no more accurate one. It is strange how many brain-workers we have and how few intellectuals, how many specialists whose knowledge and interest are confined to their own ‘field’ and how few generalists whose interests are broad and nonprofessional. A century ago Lord Melbourne [William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne], himself a strikingly nonspecialized and indeed rather ignorant intellectual. observed: ‘A man may the master of the ancient and modern languages and yet his manners shall not be in the least degree softened or harmonized. The elegance, grace and feeling which he is continually contemplating cannot mix with his thoughts or insinuate themselves into their expression—he remains as coarse, as rude and awkward, and often more so, than the illiterate and the ill-instructed.’”

[Dwight Macdonald. Against the American Grain. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., imprint of Plenum Publishing Corporation. 1983. Pages 61-62.]

“While anarchist scholars decline to play the role of a Leninist vanguard dictating correct ‘theory’ to activists charged with ‘practice,’ this does not mean that they have to disavow any critical role at all. On the contrary: much of anarchist cultural studies is a kind of self-study, a reflection by anarchists on the conditions and possibilities of their own activity. Among the best work we have produced are studies of contemporary as well as historical anarchist tactics of cultural resistance – studies of Indymedia and infoshops, anti-roads camps and Reclaim The Streets parties, collectively-produced journals and giant puppets. Rather than simply affirming these practices, however, a number of these studies raise significant questions about their potentials and their limitations.…

“I would argue that an important dimension of anarchist cultural studies research, for the near future, will consist in historical research: a thorough re-examination of the role of cultural resistance in the anarchist movements of the ‘classical’ period, from the First International through the Spanish Civil War.”

[Jesse Cohn, “What Is Anarchist Cultural Studies?: Precursors, Problems, and Prospects—Beyond Banality.” New Perspectives on Anarchism. Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl, editors. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2010. Pages 403-424.]

“There is no space for a critical public narrative around this, which is unsurprising. Cue the usual calls for anyone visibly Muslim to participate in the public grief – the local imam makes his way down to the armory to lay a wreath and remind everyone that he’s Canadian to. With us or against us – the logic of war begins to take over. Meanwhile, in Alberta, in the same town that hosts the fighter jets that just left for Iraq, nationalists paint ‘Go Home’ and ‘Canada’ across the face of a mosque.…

“Within Syria, this was the government’s strategy from the beginning. The government responded to protest militarily, which meant that only a militarized opposition was possible. As conflict escalated, the possibilities steadily closed until the only roles left to be played were soldier, refugee, or victim. And the part of the opposition to the Syrian government most prepared to accept the military paradigm were the religious fascist organization such as the Islamic State/Daesh and Al-Nusra. And this was exactly what the government had anticipated – the logic of war had narrowed the field until Bashar al-Assad could reasonably look like the good guy.

“The grassroots activists who started this uprising are still struggling for freedom and dignity, but their voices are largely submerged in the logic of war. Effectively, the conflict has become a struggle between rival fascisms, secular and religious, each with their different international backers.…

“When I talk about how the logic of war shuts down discussion, I’m not hoping for some sort of democratic ideal, the free exchange of views in the marketplace of ideas. I don’t just want to be able to go hold a ‘Fuck the Military’ sign out in front of the armory without getting beat up. I’m talking about fascism and police states, where the logic of war enters into every part of our lives and demands we line up on the side of the nation state that claims us. What kind of response can we imagine to this? …

“In a time of decreasing radical energy, how do we orient ourselves within this logic of war? Between competing fascisms, can we find those with whom we share affinity on the ground in the Middle East, and would our ability to provide solidarity influence the struggle either here or there? Will organizing against new repressive measures provide opportunities for increasing struggle, or will it make us more isolated and vulnerable to repression? What kinds of support and solidarity are we interested in extending to Muslim communities that are increasingly being targeted by the state, and what opportunities could be created by building relationships there?

“We have no conclusions to offer. Roads in Hamilton will be closed Tuesday for a soldier’s funeral. Two months ago, two young Muslim men were attacked and badly beaten on their way home from Friday prayer. The sign in front of City Hall displays a countdown to the start of the PanAm games, and we know the security apparatus for that event is already in full gear, looking around Hamilton for plausible threats it can use to justify its existence. Should we try to go on the offensive against the nationalist escalation, or should we take this time of diminished expectations to withdraw from confrontation and strengthen our networks? What opportunities exist in this moment? Can we find ways to refuse the logic of war and continue to struggle for anarchy?”

[Anonymous. Public Grief and the Logic of War. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. November, 2014. Pages 1-4.]

“In the [19]60s-[19]70s, the workers’ reaction to the Fordist conditions at the time went beyond the wage demands that had until then aimed at offsetting extreme working conditions. Wages were of course often good (especially in the car industry). That was part of the Fordist compromise. And it was precisely that compromise that the line workers’ revolt challenged. Beyond the wage demands controlled by the unions, and in opposition to the latter, line workers in the [19]60s and [19]70s began sabotaging, missing work, drinking and taking drugs, stopping work on the slightest excuse or without any excuse at all, causing havoc on the shop floor. All these kinds of actions were grouped under the term anti-work to underscore the lack of proletarian identification with their activity in the factory, respect for machines, and pride in being workers. These manifestations of the proletariat’s revolt against capital were what forged the basis for subsequent theoretical developments, from the end of affirmation of labor against capital as an ‘overcoming’ of the capitalist mode of production to the current notion of communisation (immediateness of communism, simultaneous negation of the two classes, overcoming of the economy and of work).” [Bruno Astarian. Crisis activity and communisation. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. June, 2010. Pages 10-11.]

“There is some confusion about the notion of anti-work.… The confusion arises from a lack of precision in defining the notion of anti-work. On the one hand, it groups in the same category as anti-work certain behaviors such as a worker’s laziness, when he or she tries normally to do the least amount of work, or a preference for (compensated) unemployment or living on the margin. Such practices of refusal of work, of resistance, are as old as the proletariat itself and do not define modern anti-work. On the other hand, the confusion lies in classifying as anti-work forms of resistance to exploitation that are in actual fact pro-work, e.g. Luddism. I believe that we should save the term anti-work for the struggles of our time (since ’[19]68) which demonstrate that the proletariat is no longer the class that will affirm itself in the revolution as the class of hegemonic labor, nor is it the class that will make work mandatory for everyone or replace the bourgeoisie in managing the economy.

“To better understand the specificity of the term anti-work, it has to be placed in a historical perspective. It should be noted that what we are interested in here are struggles in the workplace, against the usual characteristics of the relationship between workers and their means of labor (absenteeism, sabotage, lack of discipline in general).”

[Bruno Astarian. A Few Clarifications on Anti-Work. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 4.]

“It [the redefinition of value] proceeds from the specific conditions of crisis in the years around 1968 and its anti-work content. That phase of not really insurrectional crisis occurred years ago. But the changes in the class relation since then have in no way brought that content into question …. I discussed above the two defining features of value-producing labour: the permanent quest for productivity gains and the necessity of standardization …. What definition could we give of the negation of these two features, negation which would define value abolished?” [Bruno Astarian. Value and Its Abolition. Privately published. January, 2016. Page 45.]

“Thanks for comining. I’ll be your Luddite this afternoon. The token Luddite, so it falls upon me to uphold this unpopular or controversial banner. The emphasis will be on Breadth rather than depth, and in rather reified terms, owing to time considerations. But I hope it won’t disable whatever cogency there might be to these somewhat general remarks.

“It seems to me we’re in a barren, impoverished, technicized place and that these characteristics are interrelated. Technology claims that it extends the senses, but this extension, it seems, ends up blunting and atrophying the senses, instead of what this promise claims. Technology today is offering solutions to everything in every sphere. You can hardly think of one for which it doesn’t come up with the answer. But it would like us to forget that in virtually every case, it has created the problem in the first place that it comes round to saying that it will transcend. Just a little more technology. That’s what it always says. And I think we see the results ever more clearly today.

“The computer cornucopia, as everything becomes wired into the computer throughout society, offers variety, the riches of complete access, and yet, as Frederick Jameson said, we live in a society that is the most standardized in history.”

[John Zerzan. Against Technology: A Talk by John Zerzan April 23, 1997. Eugene, Oregon: Anti-Authoritarians Anonymous. 1997. No pagination.]

“On Tuesday a cart carrying eight or nine looms to safety from the Maltby and Brewwet firm in Sutton [England], fifteen miles north of Nottingham [England], was stopped … and men with their faces blackened smashed its cargo with heavy hammers, bent the metal parts to uselessness, and made a bonfire of the wooden pieces in the middle of the street.

“That evening a thousand men descended on Sutton from nearby villages, assembling at a milestone on the main road to the north, and marched on the town with their axes and pikes and hammers; about three hundred of them were said to be armed with muskets and pistols. The number of machines they broke is given as somewhere between thirty-seven and seventy, said to be ‘the frames of the principal weavers’ of the town, one of whom, named Betts, whose shop was completely destroyed, was reported to have died soon after, ‘deranged.’

“Luddism had begun.…

“Machine destruction had been a tactic of the weavers and their kind since at least midway through the previous century. What was different about the Luddites was exactly the opposite of how many imagine them. Read many accounts, especially those written by supporters of the trade unions, and the Luddites come across as mindless and disorganised, who if born a few centuries later would probably be kicking in bus shelters. True, Luddism was not the act of pre-organised political groups. However it was often much more powerful; a defensive reaction of communities under threat.”

[Voices from Earth First, “The Luddites’ War on Industry: A story of machine smashing and spies.” Do or Die. Issue 6, 1997. Pages 65-71.]

“Principles of Neo-Luddism

[Chellis Glendinning. Notes toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1990. Pages 4-5.]

“This article develops an anarchist political theory of science and technology that highlights the latent forms of anarchist praxis present within a diverse range of social movement engagements with contemporary techno-science. We argue that there is a marked congruence between contemporary social movement engagement and the key concepts and principles underpinning anarchist writing on science and technology from the nineteenth century onwards.…

“… Key questions explored here are what does the philosophical and political tradition of anarchism have to contribute to such contemporary challenges to dominant social-epistemic orders and is there a theory of science embedded in anarchist political thought that is relevant and applicable to contemporary struggles?

“Given the continuing importance of science to modern states and the neo-liberal ‘global knowledge economy,’ a critical anarchist theory of science and technology needs to overcome the limitations within various forms of ‘primitivism’ ….”

[Charles Thorpe and Ian Welsh, “Beyond primitivism: towards a twenty-first century anarchist theory and praxis for science and technology.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 16, number 1, spring–summer 2008. Pages 48-75.]

“The contextualist must find ways to realise the experience and represent that experience with an empirical basis for his or her belief that the representation of experience which she or he ‘has’ can be realised in this society and culture. The critic completes the experience of the work of art by giving evidence of herself as a thinking and feeling individual who is impressed by changing historical circumstances, shifting contexts of value, the insufficiency of cultural norms, and the difficulty of accepting permanence as an aesthetic value. The act of completion is a social act which demonstrates the situational immediacy of aesthetic experience.” [Jerry Zaslove, “Radical Contextualism: Studies in Critical Approaches to Literature.” Anarcho-Modernism: Toward a New Critical Theory—In Honour of Jerry Zaslove. Ian Angus, editor. Vancouver, British Columbia: Talonbooks. 2001. Kindle edition.]

“Issues regarding academic controversies were discussed in the classroom and not just at meetings. Another missing element today is the continuing labour struggles of sessionals. Strikes at the time provided an opportunity for education to confront reality in regard to the professional behaviour of academics about meeting classes and crossing picket lines. Of course today, with the technological fix, one may not have an actual classroom to picket or a course that is not a part of commodity production or course management. At the time the fear of violence was in the air about student movements and their characterization as strikers and anti-war agitators.” [Jerry Zaslove, “A Report to an Academy: Some Untimely Meditations Out of Season.” English Studies in Canada. Volume 38, issue 1, 2013. Pages 27-50.]

“In the DVD [digital versatile/video disc] We Dance On Your Grave, the documentary view of Simon Fraser’s 40ᵗʰ Anniversary Party is transformed into a slow-motion silent video of pathos-ridden dancing on the premises of Arthur Erickson’s imitation Crystal Palace Mall. Alex Morrison prepared the video by filming the celebration of a fabricated public sphere. The video reveals no genuine joy or celebration of the origins of a university in 1965 in the muddy construction site of the time, but reveals a form of stupidity about their own amnesiac actions. It is fake. It mimics the dropout culture by dropping in. This is the kind of stupidity that comes with the erasure of history and the substitution for historical consciousness — displacing any class-consciousness — with ersatz carnivalesque posturing. This is not a celebration of individual memories but of the taboos on ‘academic freedom’ that appear artistically as a strange concoction of exotic costumes that imitate the now mythical ‘Sixties.’ In the context of the entire installation this integrates the objects into figures of loss. The camouflaging of the legacy of academic freedom across the centuries becomes reified nonsense commingling with a question of ‘Why Are We Here At All?’” [Jerry Zaslove, “Silence, Counterfeit and Aesthetic Act in Alex Morrison’s Vision of ‘Academic Freedom as Academic’—Installations of the Phantoms of a Utopian Will.” Anthology of Exhibition Essays: 2006 | 2007. Catriona Jeffries, editor. Vancouver, British Columbia: CJ Press. 2008. Pages 96-111.]

“… both textualist and contextualist readings can be reductive, even though the label is, in literary studies especially, usually attached to the former. If we take seriously the claim that analysis of all kinds of texts is not only acceptable but also necessary in cultural studies, the question remains, what would this mean in practice? What does analysis of texts involve in a post cultural studies situation? One solution, referred to in passing above, would be an integrated approach which attempts to cover all the levels and aspects of the texts in question. Analysis of a text would then need to account for all aspects and levels of text – production, text, and reception – and also to try out different perspectives on it. Since these aspects are not independent in the real world, a division of labour e.g. according to disciplinary lines distorts the research object.” [Urpo Kovala, “Cultural Studies and Cultural Text Analysis.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. Volume 4, issue 2, article 2, 2002. Pages 1-7.]

“The term ‘black’ anarchist has been thrown around recently in a number of international milieux and journals. Indeed during the last few years of my travels throughout North and South America and Europe I have noted repeated attempts to define, through action and theory, the ideas associated with black anarchy. Following is a brief, incomplete outline of some of the more common aspects of what black anarchists think and do. These tendencies are numbered for convenience, and not to show priority or importance.

“Red Excursus: I will not discuss ‘red’ anarchy as it seems well defined by the collectivist, syndicalist, communist variants of anarchist ideas that were developed more than a hundred years ago and still enjoy a great deal of popularity and adherents. I emphasize that I don’t see the two various strains as being mutually exclusive, opposed, or even necessarily very different at the macro level. The old sectarianism and exclusion, a gnawing symptom of Marxism and the Social Democracy, plays no role in this essay. I am attempting to describe and provide some topography to a growing, relatively new agreement among a particular group of my comrades, in doing so I support and encourage those who follow different anarchist ideas and paths. No one is wrong, no one is right. The best we can hope for is clarity, not hegemony.…

“In this context violence is defined as a tactic, whether applied to insurrection, riot, attentat, or simple refusal. There is an almost overwhelming consensus among the black anarchists that the use of violence is necessary, indeed desirable, perhaps essential.…

“There is a strong individualist strain in black anarchism, mostly as a function of activity and less due to long nights breathlessly reading Stirner. In essence when engages in actions it’s easier to work in small groups, and sometimes alone rather than attempt to build large or even medium sized organizations. These small groups which I’ll call teams, a word taken from our Athenian comrades, bring into clear relief the importance of individual initiative, they decentralize decision and action, they emphasize clearly that while there is no I in team, there is an ‘m’ and an ‘e.’”

[Paul Z. Simons. Pure Black: An Emerging Consensus Among Some Comrades? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 1-2.]

“Some of the authors of this piece are survivors, others are reflecting on their own role as people who have been abusive in the past, but they all share a commitment to the struggle against a Culture of Rape. When we say ‘we,’ we are not referring to ‘survivors,’ or even to the authors, but to everyone who agrees with the statement made, and perhaps more broadly, to everyone who sees themselves a part of this struggle. There are surely survivors whose experiences will seemingly contradict the arguments made here. But of course the examples cited throughout this text are not meant to be exhaustive or all encompassing. We do not see our own experiences as exemplary of the experiences of all survivors, or even most survivors. They do, however, provide examples of how Rape Culture has materialized in our own lives, a point we thought worth sharing.

“We would be rightly criticized for focusing so heavily on the anarchist milieu, which of course most survivors will not identify with. But we saw little use in trying to extend ourselves beyond our own experiences in the hopes of becoming more ‘relevant.’ It is also our hope that an anarchist analysis of both Power and struggle provide a useful framework for deconstructing the functioning of Rape Culture, and could perhaps provide insight even to those who are unfamiliar with the anarchist subculture. It is our belief that the dynamics we described will be echoed in other milieus as well.

“Our gentle reader will also notice that we have chosen to use gender neutral language throughout. Of course the majority of survivors are women or people who don’t conform to patriarchal gender identities, whereas the majority of perpetrators are cis gendered men. The neutrality of our language obscures the systemic nature of not only this, but also the way that interpersonal violence has consistently been a tool of colonial invasion, imperialist occupation, and the maintenance of white supremacy. It obscures the way in which organizing against interpersonal violence has historically been co-opted by white middleclass feminists, leaving women of colour, poor women, queer and trans folk with less access to support resources. It was not our intention to depoliticize the nature of interpersonal violence with language that is gender neutral (certainly, when it comes to gender, we are not neutral!). But having said that, we also wanted to recognize that people of all identities, from all walks of life, can be both survivors or perpetrators, or even both at the same time. We didn’t want those whose experiences don’t fit neatly into oppressive binaries to find themselves even further marginalized here.”

[Words to Fire Press. Betrayal: A critical analysis of rape culture in anarchist subcultures. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 2.]

“This is my take on anarchism, Taoism, and emotional responsibility.

“It is applicable to yourself, to your relationships with others, to society, to nature. It is intended to be more a treatise on philosophy than a how-to guide to build an anarchist utopia, but there is a guide within it.

“That guide goes like this: …

“Think of loving someone you don’t want to love. The harder you try not to be, the more in love you seem to find yourself. Trying not to feel something is like using a shovel to climb out of a hole. You only dig yourself deeper.

“It’s when you look at the shovel in your hands and choose to dig that you see where the hole goes. And often, it leads to the very surface you were trying to get to in the first place. But you will never find that surface if you do anything other than dig. By which I mean, by feeling as hard as you can that which you are afraid to feel.…

“… the practice of anarchism is in trusting yourself and trusting others. In trusting other people, not to do what you want, but to do what they want, and that what you and they want will be in cooperation, even if it doesn’t look like it to you right away.

“That in simply being, in doing whatever it is that you do, in controlling nothing other than yourself, the world will become an anarchist utopia, because that’s what an anarchist utopia is.”

[Anna prouty. An Anarcho-Taoist Manifesto: Emotional Responsibility, Needs, and Amorphous Activism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 1.]

“In Daoist philosophy, ‘a person … is understood as a matrix of relationships which can only be fully expressed by reference to the organismic whole.’ Thus, there are different views on individual freedom; in Western anarchism individual freedom has to do with self-determination and one’s own intrinsic character, while Daoist freedom, in short, is the comprehension of the Dao [Chinese, 道, Dào, ‘Way’] as the whole and the source of everything. But although Western anarchism and Daoism have different views on person and freedom, they both agree that human realization lies in the achievement of freedom, so … Daoism satisfies the first condition for an anarchist theory. However, … Daoist conception of freedom is derived from a clearly articulated metaphysical position, and this is an important difference between the political philosophy of the Laozi and Western anarchism. Although both the Laozi and the Western anarchism rely on freedom in achieving human consummation, the meaning of freedom of the latter is in politics, that is, freedom of oppression by authority, so it is a political and societal freedom, whereas the Laozi goes beyond this meaning of freedom.… Having in mind the context of the whole text of the Laozi, we can conclude that the meaning of freedom … is not only in politics but also on a metaphysical level, that is, humans should have the freedom to obtain and cultivate their natural and simple character that originally was endowed in them by the Dao. In short, according to the Laozi, the political freedom of the individual is inconceivable without this metaphysical freedom.” [Aleksandar Stamatov, “The Laozi and Anarchism.” Asian Philosophy. Volume 24, number 3, August 2004. Pages 260-278.]

“Like most later anarchists, the Taoists see the universe as being in a continuous state of flux. Reality is in a state of process; everything changes, nothing is constant. They also have a dialectical concept of change as a dynamic interplay as opposing forces. Energy flows continually between the poles of yin and yang [Chinese, 阴阳, yīn-yáng]. At the same time, they stress the unity and harmony of nature. Nature is self-sufficient and uncreated; there is no need to postulate a conscious creator. It is a view which not only recalls that of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus [Ancient Greek/A̓rchaía Hellēniká, Ἡράκλειτος, Hērákleitos] but coincides with the description of the universe presented by modern physics. Modern social ecology, which stresses unity in diversity, organic growth and natural order, further reflects the Taoist world-view.…

“The anarchistic tendency of the Taoists comes through even stronger in the writings of the philosopher Chuang Tzu [Chinese, 莊周, Zhuāng-Zhōu], who lived about 369?286 BC. His work consists of arguments interspersed with anecdotes and parables which explore the nature of the Tao, the great organic process of which man is a part. It is not addressed to any particular ruler. Like the Tao te ching [Chinese, 道德经, Dào-dé-Jīng], it rejects all forms of government and celebrates the free existence of the self-determining individual. The overriding tone of the work is to be found in a little parable about horses ….”

[Josh. Anarchism and Taoism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Pages 2 and 5.]

“Once the Anarchist Revelation has achieved its transformative purpose it will no longer have to maintain the same shape and will not need the hard anger of revolt; organic society will no longer have to throw up men and women destined to incarnate that rebellion; individuals of a particular kind will no longer find themselves to be outsiders and rebels impelled to dedicate their lives to lonely defiance and bitter resistance. We will have reached eudaimonia: we will be living the way we are meant to live in the earthy tangle of nature, the perfect imperfection of what is real and true and growing. And our primal religion will remind us that, as the Hermetica say: ‘All things are linked together, and connected one with another in a chain extending from the lowest to the highest; so that we see that they are not many, or rather, that all are one.’” [Paul Cudenec. The Anarchist Revelation: Being What We’re Meant to Be. Sussex, England: Winter Oak Press. 2013. Pages 126.]

“The ancient Egyptians used a ten-day week and the Mayan calendar used a 13 and a 20-day period. Lithuanians used weeks of nine days before adopting Christianity. In other words, there’s nothing natural about the week. It’s an enclosure of time, an artificial construct imposed on the world by a succession of centralising, controlling forces from the Roman Empire, through the Christian Church and the British Empire to the global techno-business hegemony of today.…

“As would-be liberators of the human race, we must look beyond superficial changes in social organisation. We must dig deep to uproot the imagination of our species from the dank heavy sterility into which it has grown embedded.

“We must not waste a single minute calling for shorter working hours or fewer working days. We must aim higher in our attack on temporal tyranny. It is time we looked as far ahead as the end of the week!”

[Paul Cudenec. Towards the End of the Week: The Tyranny of Time. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2004. Pages 1-2.]

“This book [The Anarchist Revelation: Being What We’re Meant to Be], in fact, consists of two quite separate themes, or rather, it is about two ideologies that the author Paul Cudenec seeks to promote and unite, namely anarchism and mysticism. The first offers his reflections on anarchism as a political tradition and movement which, quite misleadingly, Cudenec tends to equate with primitivism, thus heralding a blanket dismissal of ‘civilisation’ in all its aspects. The second is on religious mysticism to which he aligns Jung’s psychology and thoughts on existentialism, mostly of religious existentialists such as Karl Jaspers and Colin Wilson. The work purports to forge a new and profound philosophy for the twenty-first century. In reality Cudenec simply regurgitates, with endless quotations, a rather sterile version of medieval religious mysticism – otherwise known as ‘traditionalism,’ ‘perennial philosophy,’ ‘theosophy’ or ‘esotericism’ – a mysticism that entails a ‘metaphysical’ account of some ‘divine reality’ that transcends our earthly existence. Cudenec thus outlines and advocates a form of religious mysticism associated with such reactionary scholars as René Guénon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr (who doesn’t get a mention), Martin Lings, Frithjof Schuon and Ananda Coomaraswamy, none of whom can really be described as anarchists, although they may have been associated with the cultural avant-garde.” [Brian Morris, “Anarchism and Mysticism.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 23, number 1, 2015. Pages 111-115.]

“I use the term ‘Muslim anarchism’ in a qualified manner to describe specific examples of contemporary radical anti-authoritarian thought which self-identify as being Islamic and acknowledge affinities with anarchism. The paper is not concerned with mapping Muslim anarchism as a “tradition” of thought or a social movement, or with revisionist interpretations of Islam as being anarchistic. In this sense, it is intended neither as a survey or typology of Muslim anarchism nor as implying that the specific writers under discussion here are representative of a wider Muslim anarchist tradition. Muslim anarchism is thus a contested social and intellectual category which has, nonetheless, been used to describe radical forms of Islamic hermeneutics that lie at global Islam’s very periphery. While a comparatively minor ideological outgrowth, there is now a marginal literature on the subject, mainly by its proponents, who self-identify as anarchists or draw on anarchism. In this sense, it can be viewed alongside other ideologized forms of Muslim activism which seek legitimacy through divergent hermeneutic practices. There is also a growing, largely activist, literature on the compatibility of religion with anarchism and studies of non-Western anarchism, within which Muslim anarchism has increasingly come to be situated.” [Zaheer Kazmi, “Automatic Islam: Divine Anarchy and the Machines of God.” Modern Intellectual History. Volume 12, number 1, April 2015. Pages 33-64.]

“Some Muslims want to create political edifices, and dream of a world ruled by Shariah [Arabic/ʿArabiyyaẗ, شَرِيعَة, Šarīʿaẗ, ‘path’] law. The way I see things, that kind of thinking doesn’t just blow up police stations. It sends aircraft flying into skyscrapers.

“I say, forget power — let’s build a society based on compassion. I say, forget law — let’s unwrite the Shariah by purifying our hearts. We don’t need to blow up police stations. We need to make them redundant. That, I sincerely believe, is the universal religion.”

[Yakoub Islam. The Muslim Anarchist’s Charter. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2004. Pages 1-2.]

“The people with whom this paper is concerned were anarchists in the simple sense of believers in an-archy, ‘no government.’ They were not secularists, individualists, communists, social reformers, revolutionaries or terrorists, merely thinkers who held that Muslim society could function without what we would call the state. Their view is, however, of great interest from the point of view of early Islamic political thought and the history of anarchism alike. Since they are largely unknown even to Islamicists and have yet to be discovered by historians of anarch- ism, I am grateful for the opportunity to present them to a wider public here.” [Patricia Crone, “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists.” Past & Present. Number 167, May 2000. Pages 3-28.]

“I will be arguing for three things in light of this literature’s problems. The first is the construction of an anarchic interpretation of Islam and an Islamic interpretation of anarchism. And for this construction to be done Koranically and anarchistically, by drawing conceptual and pragmatic anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist resonances between Islam and anarchism. Second, that this synergistic interpretation addresses a relevant audience and be with a particular purpose. The audience addressed will be Muslims and anarchists within the newest social movements, with the purpose of helping increase the possibility of solidarity between Muslims and anarchists. Three, that this interpretation adopt and advocate for a balanced approach between communal politics, ‘based on affinity-based ethico-political commitments,’ and micro-politics … as opposed to a strict adherence to an individualistic Stirnerian approach. Under these criteria, I offer the interpretation that I label Anarca-Islam.

“This interpretation is of value for three reasons. First, it can allow Muslims, and Muslim anarchists, to resist the aforementioned dichotomous representations. Second, because it counters two misconceptions of Islam and Muslims amongst anarchists. The first misconception is the impossibility of the construction of either an anarchic interpretation of Islam or an Islamic interpretation of anarchism. The second misconception is the impossibility of the co-existence of Muslim and anarchist identities in a single subjectivity. Evidence of these misconceptions is to be demonstrated through anarchist articles, forums, and blogs. Third, this interpretation is of value because it carves a panegyric desert of the present where Muslims, anarchists, and Muslim anarchists can collaborate more effectively in the newest social movements. Examples of their current collaboration are groups like No One Is Illegal (NOII) and Solidarity Across Borders (SAB).”

[Mohamed Jean Veneuse. Anarca-Islam. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 10-11.]

“The ‘case’ I investigate is of Sayyid-Sally, an Egyptian transsexual medical student at Al-Azhar University, a pre-eminent institution for Islamic religious studies, who was expelled in 1982 because of her gendered identity. In this article I examine Al-Azhar’s position, judicial edict, or Fatwa, regarding Sayyid-Sally. For even after the revelation of Sayyid-Sally’s identity, her sex change operation and even after Al-Azhar admitted the existence of the category of the “Hermaphrodite” in certain Islamic legal interpretations, heteronormative gender orientations were still re-established and re-worked by Al-Azhar. I make the case that Al-Azhar’s position corresponds to a binary logical order which makes distinction between Natural Hermaphrodite and Un-natural Hermaphrodite. Sayyid-Sally was tolerated at best, even when 9 years later the Administrative Court of Cairo repealed Al-Azhar’s decision of expelling Sayyid-Sally. I argue that Anarchism as a political and philosophical orientation, can uniquely inform Islam, and move the debate beyond a practice or mere tolerance to help develop a doctrine of acceptance. I do this to help open-minded (non-essentialist/non-dogmatic) Muslims and anarchists better understand each other, and therefore to more effectively collaborate in the context of what Richard J.F. Day has called the ‘newest’ social movements.” [Mohamed Jean Veneuse. The Body of the Condemned Sally: Paths to Queering anarca-Islam. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 3.]

“From a base of ‘anarca-islam,’ that I constructed as an act of resistance to capitalist-States. I do this, while recognizing the impossibility of ever permanently establishing a space of resistance ‘free’ of capitalist and authoritarian practices and the representations ascribed to me by the capitalist-State. ‘Who I am,’ is an impossible question. ‘What I am’ is more ‘facile’: I’m a self-identifying Muslim anarchist, a settler of Arab and African descent and ever more conjunctive ands in the unraveling, unfolding, and unsettling of myself. That said just because you’re a Muslim and/or anarchist doesn’t make you a part of my communities, my decolonized and reindigenized Ummah [Arabic/ʿArabiyyaẗ, أُمَّة, ꞌUmmaẗ, ‘nation,’ ‘people,’ or ‘community’], as much as it’s the coherent and consistent set of ethics and politics that should’ve arrived with an identity irrespective of what that identity is. Ideologies and pure politics are an illusion.” [Mohamed Jean Veneuse. On the Delusion of (non)violence & Difference between Progressive-Liberalism & Radicalism: Between Trump, BLM, DAPL-INM, & Tahrir. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 47.]

“… this book can act as a first important step towards a better understanding of Christian anarchism in political theology and political thought. Moreover, it also opens up areas of potential dialogue for instance with other trends in anarchism, with pacifist thinking, with liberation theology, and in general with the growing literature on religion and politics. It provides a unique perspective to Christians pondering how their faith is to inform their politics. It might also be of interest to non-Christians who are curious about the political dimension of what continues to be one of the world’s most widespread religions. Obviously, it also makes available to Christian anarchist activists and similar Christian radicals a fairly comprehensive summary that weaves together many of the thinkers they might have read so far on the topic. Indeed, it will also be relevant to those who have studied other aspects of some of these thinkers, by clarifying that side of their thinking. This is especially the case for Tolstoy, whose Christian anarchism is rarely given serious academic attention. In synthesising Christian anarchism and presenting it as a tradition, therefore, this book is—I hope—potentially relevant to a wide range of (academic and lay) thinkers, Christians, and activists.” [Alexandre Christoyannopoulos. Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel. Abridged edition. Exeter, England: Imprint Academic. 2013. Kindle edition.]

“I am convinced that Ellulism—the theology and politics of Jacques Ellul— is seriously defective. It is nevertheless widely held and respected among evangelicals. The burden of this essay, therefore, is to bring its flaws to view and thereby to explain why I believe about it as I do. My agenda will be threefold: (1) to expose its exegetical shortcomings, (2) to reveal its political and philosophical inadequacies, and (3) to trace its ideological roots back to their source.” [Michael Bauman, “Jesus, Anarchy And Marx: The Theological And Political Contours Of Ellulism.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. Volume 35, number 2, June 1992. Pages 199-216.]

“… we have to eliminate two thousand years of accumulated Christian errors, or mistaken traditions, and I do not say this as a Protestant accusing Roman Catholics, for we have all been guilty of the same deviations or aberrations. Nor do I want to say that I am the first to take this move or that I have discovered anything. I do not pretend to be able to unveil things hidden from the beginning of the world. The position that I take is not a new one in Christianity. I will first study the biblical foundations for the relation between Christianity and anarchism. I will then take a look at the attitude of Christians in the first three centuries. But what I write is not a sudden resurgence after seventeen centuries of obscurity. There has always been a Christian anarchism. In every century there have been Christians who have discovered the simple biblical truth, whether intellectually, mystically, or socially. They include some great names, for example, Tertullian (at first), Fra Dolcino, Francis of Assisi, [John] Wycliffe, [Martin] Luther (except for the twofold mistake of putting power back in the hands of the princes and supporting the massacre of rebellious peasants), [Hugues Felicité Robert de] Lammenais, John Bost, and Charles de Foucauld.…

“Jesus’ attitude towards political authority in the Gospels is a radically negative one. He himself refuses to exercise a juridical type of authority. He counsels his disciples not to imitate the kings of nations (‘kings and governors have dominion over men; let there be none like that among you…’). He refuses to become king or to participate in the political conflicts of his time. It is very significant, in this regard, that there were both Roman ‘collaborators’ (Matthew) and Zealots, the violent anti-Roman patriots (Judas, Simon) among his disciples. He knew quite well the resistance parry and refused to join it. He held political authority up to derision.”

[Jacques Ellul. Anarchy and Christianity. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, translator. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1991. Page 7.]

“Anarchists can accept Christianity, and Christians can participate in anarchy. The curious thing is that the connection fails to take place. This is because neither Christians nor anarchism are attractive to each other, and because today to be a socialist (or even a Marxist) and a Christian raises few if any eye brows (at least in France). Today no one thinks of conjoining anarchism and Christianity.…

“In what follows I would like to sketch another mode of rapprochement between anarchism and Christianity which I believe will abandon none of the biblical message, On the contrary, it seems to me that biblical thought leads directly to anarchism, and that this is the only ‘political anti-political’ position in accord with Christian thinking.”

[Jacques Ellul, “Anarchism and Christianity.” Katallagete. Fall, 1980. Pages 14-24.]

“At a time when Germany and Nazism are crushed, at a time when the victory of the allied armies is finally established, a question remains asked of us by [Adolf] Hitler’s final two agendas, hardly a month before his ruin, where he affirmed his certainty of victory. Everyone laughed at this at the moment, while it was evident that nothing more would be able to save Germany and we thought: your people are whipped, this is madness. Everyone has forgotten this today because the matter is settled. And yet, mustn’t we be wary of this attitude in the face of this man’s assertions? When since 1938 he was threatening, we were saying ‘blackmail.’ When, in January 1940, he said that in July he would be in Paris, we were saying ‘rodomontade’ [ranting, bragging, or boasting]. When, in 1938, he had spoken of invading Romania and the Ukraine, who took him seriously? And yet, if we had really taken [Hitler’s book,] Mein Kampf seriously, if we had really wanted to see in it a plan of action and not, as we usually think is the case with our politicians, an electoral program which we never implement, perhaps we would have taken some precautions. Because everything Hitler did was announced by Mein Kampf: the goals, the methods and the results. He was not able to carry it to the end, but he didn’t lack the will. Everything he said, he did. Can we take these agendas lightly that, while he knew very well that his armies were defeated, he was still affirming his victory?” [Jacques Ellul. The victory of Hitler? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1945. Page 1.]

“… many anarchists, almost all the classics, view God as the supreme arche on which all other forms of authority find their justification, and unless the individual can learn to raise the ego to the position of the religious God, they will remain a slave. This would require a whole other discussion on the nature of divine authority as represented in the bible, and I think Jacques Ellul has persuasively argued the compatibility between ‘No Gods — No Masters’ and ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty’ in his essay ‘Jesus and Marx.’ Suffice to say, Christianity’s historical perversion was to recognise the state, and I think that fundamentally, it was the character of this perversion and its many destructive consequences that the early anarchists were attacking.” [Marlow. Anarchism and Christianity. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 8.]

“Socialists, communists, and anarchists, with their bombs and their revolutions, are far less dangerous to governments than these men, who from different places proclaim their refusals, all based upon the same doctrine, familiar to all. Every government knows how to de fend itself from revolutionists; it holds the means in its own hands, and therefore does not fear these external foes. But what can a government do to protect itself from men who declaim against all authority as useless, superfluous, and injurious, offering, however, no opposition to authority, merely rejecting its offices, dispensing with its services, and therefore refusing to participate in it?” [Lyof N. Tolstoï (Leo N. Tolstoy). The Kingdom of God is Within You. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1913. Page 213.]

“I understood now that in laying down the proposition of non-resistance to evil, Jesus not only points out its immediate result to every man, but that in opposition to the principles prevailing from the time of Moses to his own, accepted by the Roman Law, and still existing in the codes of the different nations, he also lays down this rule of nonresistance (which, according to his teaching, should be the binding principle of our social life), to free humanity from the evils wrought by itself. He says to mankind, ‘You think that your laws correct evil; they only increase it. There is one only way of extirpating evil—to return good to all men without distinction. You have tried your principle for thousands of years; try now mine, which is the reverse.’” [Leo Tolstoy. What I Believe: (“My Religion”). Christchurch, Hants, England: The Free Age Press. 1902. Page 41.]

“[Mahatma] Gandhi was deeply attracted in principle to the nonviolent anarchism by which [Leo] Tolstoy abided, he also came to understand that it provided an insufficient basis on which to build either resistance to an oppressive state or a nonviolent social order.” [Vinay Lal, “Gandhi’s West, the West’s Gandhi.” New Literary History. Volume 40, number 2, spring 2009. Pages 281-313.]

“[Leo] Tolstoy’s politics, which combined Christianity, pacifism and anarchism, has always been a source of disquiet to his many biographers, and to many Marxists too. They laud the power, the realism and the sincerity of his literary imagination, but when they turn to his politics they seem to fall into despair! [Vladimir] Lenin thought Tolstoy a genius and one of the greatest writers in history. He praised his passionate critiques of the state and the church, and his unbending opposition to private property. Tolstoy expressed, Lenin wrote, as no other writer did, the deep feelings of protest and anger that the nineteenth century Russian peasants felt towards the Tsarist state. Yet when Lenin came to consider Tolstoy’s ‘Christian anarchism’ he was harshly dismissive. Tolstoy was a ‘crackpot,’ a ‘landlord obsessed with Christ,’ someone who failed profoundly to understand what was going on in Russia and who preached non-resistance to evil asceticism and an emotional appeal to the ‘spirit’ that were in essence reactionary, misguided and utopian.” [Brian Morris. Tolstoy and Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1999. Page 1.]

“When Leo Tolstoy died in November 1910, he was just as famous for his radical political and religious writings as he was for his fictional literature. Yet during the hundred years that have passed since, his Christian anarchist voice has been drowned by the sort of historical forces he had always been so eager to make sense of. Today, only few of even those acquainted with his literature know much about his unusual and radical religious and political writings (other perhaps than that they were unusual, radical, religious and political). What he has to say to Christians, to anarchists and indeed to the wider public, however, is just as urgent today as it was at the time of writing. In this testimonial to mark the centenary of his death, therefore, I wish to first provide a brief story of what happened to Tolstoy?s voice, and then to hint at the importance of the sort of contributions he can make to a number of vital challenges facing us today.” [Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, “‘Bethink yourselves or you will perish’: Leo Tolstoy’s voice a centenary after his death.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 18, number 2, autumn–winter 2010. Pages 11-18.]

“In your instruction about writing

“you told us that the best way

“to learn to write

“is to write letters

“because a letter is a message

“from someone to somebody

“about something.

“So this is a message

“from an agitator to another agitator

“about a discontented world

“which begins to realize

“that things are not good enough

“to be left alone.

“The Catholic Worker thinks

“that you are a wonder.

“We know what good work you are doing

“among Catholic college youth.

“But Catholic college youth

“is a small proportion of Catholic youth

“and all Catholic youth needs you.

“Not only all Catholic youth needs you

“but all youth needs you.

“And not only all those who

“are in their first youth

“but all those who are getting

“in their second youth

“and also all those who have

“reached the age of maturity

“without having reached the

“state of maturity.

“That is to say,

“we all need you.

“We all need you

“because you have the knack

“of getting at the core of things

“and of presenting your findings

“in a vivid and dynamic form.”

[Peter Maurin. Easy Essays. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. 2010. Page 12.]

“Today we too have many friends among the [Roman Catholic] hierarchy even though they seem to stand diametrically opposed to our position on pacifism. Cardinal [James Francis] Mclntyre blessed me when I saw him last Christmas Eve and he has told me never to give up this work, this Catholic Worker, which he said was a difficult and delicate work being done in the Church today. People shudder at some of our ideas, our ideas on the State and on war and peace, but when they look at our work as a whole in the Catholic Worker movement, they accept it as a whole. The fact remains that we continue, after twenty years. We stand forth as witnesses to the height and breadth and depth of the Church which is the Body of Christ, and of which we are all members, or potential members. It is a matter of vocation. We are called to be peacemakers, to give up all and take up our cross and follow Christ. May God give us all strength this coming year, to follow.” [Dorothy Day, “Problems of the Pacifist: Notes for a Talk on Peace.” Life of the Spirit (1946-1964). Volume 8, number 90, December 1953. Pages 245-252.]

“When Peter Maurin, the founder of the Catholic Worker, talked about the necessity of practicing the works of mercy, he meant all of them, and he envisioned houses of hospitality in poor parishes in every city of the country, where these precepts of Our Lord could be put into effect. He pointed out that we have turned to state responsibility through home relief, social legislation, and Social Security, and we no longer practice personal responsibility for our brother, but are repeating the words of the first murderer, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Not that our passing the buck is as crude as all that. It was a matter of social enlightenment, Holy Mother the City taking over, Holy Mother the State taking the poor to herself, gathering them to her capacious bosom studded with the jewels of the taxation of the rich and the poor alike, the subtle war between church and state meanwhile going on at all times, in the field of education, charity, the family. In the last fifteen years the all-encroaching state, as the bishops of the United States have called it, has gained the upper hand.” [Dorothy Day, “Poor for the right reasons.” Commonweal. Volume 121, number 20, November 1994. Pages 46-48.]

“Peter [Maurin] so felt the tremendous importance of this life, even though it be but a second in eternity where one day is as a thousand years, that he made one feel the magnificent significance of our work, our daily lives, the material of God’s universe and what we did with it, how we used it.

“The dignity of the worker. The dignity of work. The goodness of God’s goods. Man as a co-creator. These were the things he believed in. He had faith in himself, in his own importance as a lay apostle, and that faith was sufficient for him to rise above any and all rebuffs from whatever source they came. He knew, he was confident, that he had a message. He always talked of the necessity of the long view, of the vision, in order to give ourselves the perspective we needed to see things in the light of eternity. That very long view made the work of the day, what we did here and now, so important that each thought, each decision, each step we took determined the future, not only for ourselves but for the world. ‘For the others.’”

[Dorothy Day, “Peter Maurin, Agitator.” Blackfriars. Volume 30, number 354, September 1949. Pages 409-415.]

“In addition to getting out a paper, the editors of The Catholic Worker are engaging in a fight against the Unemployed Councils of the Communist Party. To combat them they are doing the same thing the Communists are doing, helping the unemployed to get relief, clothing, food and shelter. But we are cooperating with the Home Relief instead of obstructing them. Two or three times a week we have eviction cases. When a desperate man or woman comes in asking for help, we have to call the Home Relief to find out about getting a rent check. Then we have to find a landlord who will accept the voucher. Usually they won’t. There is only one landlord in our entire block who will take them. Over on Avenue B [in New York, New York] there is an Irish landlord willing to cooperate. On 17ᵗʰ Street [in New York, New York] there is a Jew. He is a Godsend because he has three houses.” [Dorothy Day, “Our Brothers, the Jews.” America. Volume 201, number 13, November 2009. Pages 14-16.]

“Dorothy Day was neither a political scientist nor a social theorist. And it would be going too far to assert that she provided a systematic analysis of the modern social order. Nonetheless, a careful survey of Day’s work does yield a basic theoretical or descriptive account and criticism of the modern social order that takes as its primary objects the territorial state or states and the capitalist economy or economies. Day criticizes the territorial state for its operational mode (centralized, impersonal, and underinclusive procedure), its effects on social life (it undermines mutual aid and personal responsibility), and for the ends (protection of capital) that it seeks. She criticizes capitalist practices for being excessively materialistic, exploitative, and oppressive.

“Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Day’s anarchism is the fact that it is in part motivated by her particular criticisms of the centralized character of the modern territorial state. It is widely accepted among contemporary social theorists that the modern territorial state is a centralized bureaucratic organization. The modern territorial state is differentiated from other kinds of political organization based on the fact that a modern territorial state divides earth into political geographic units with borders, regulates the movement of human bodies across earth, and asserts authority to regulate, with violence if necessary, the behavior of persons, that is, political subjects, who occupy the terrain over which a given state claims as its territory. Modern territorial states are notable as well for the fact that they are comprised of bureaucratic offices, departments, and agencies charged with regulating an array of social practices and activities.”

[A. Terrance Wiley. Angelic Troublemakers: Religion and Anarchism in America. New York: Bloomsbury Academic imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. 2014. Pages 77-78.]

“Any kind of resistance is important. I come out of the Dorothy Day, Christian Anarchism tradition. Anarchism is an understanding that power is the problem no matter who holds it. We have to build movements that threaten centers of power. Strong labor and mass movements are key to a healthy, open society.…

“… [Some] people don’t understand how totalitarian systems work. They better turn off their televisions and start reading Hannah Arendt. Totalitarian systems carry out wholesale surveillance not to find crimes. It’s so they have information should they seek to shut down an individual or a group. As a reporter, I covered the Stasi State in East Germany. When you are watched 24 hours a day, as we all are, you can’t use the word liberty. That’s the relationship between a master and a slave.”

[Chris Hedges, “State of Surveillance.” John Malkin, interviewer. GoodTimes. November 19th, 2014. Online publication. No pagination.]

“My father, a Presbyterian minister, had five small parishes in the Schoharie Valley in upstate New York. As a boy I got up early and drove with my Dad, his black robe laid out carefully on the back seat, from one white clapboard church to another. You could nod off for the second half of the sermon and have a couple more opportunities to catch it before the morning was out.

“One does not come out of such a background, even the rather effete intellectualism of liberal Presbyterianism, untouched. And it seemed, despite my early love of reporting, that I should follow my father into the ministry. I was one course short of a religion major at college and I went on after graduation to Harvard Divinity School. By the time it was all over I had finished five years of theological studies and countless sessions of Sunday school, church suppers and Sunday services.

“But, upon graduation, I did not get ordained, opting for the precarious existence of a freelance reporter during the war in El Salvador. I was unable to staunch a mounting distaste for the institutional church. I found myself unable to blindly accept basic Christian precepts, such as the divinity of Christ. I also came to loath the personal pietism within the church that often serves as a substitute for the struggle for social justice.

“In most cases I have found religion, as defined by many of the overtly religious, to be an impediment to the understanding and honesty that is the bedrock of all good reporting, indeed all honest intellectual thought. Any kind of dogma, including religious dogma, is a hindrance to our work.

“I have severed nearly all ties with the institutional church since leaving seminary. But my religious upbringing informs my reporting. It is the prism by which I define my life.”

[Chris Hedges, “A seminarian becomes a reporter.” Nieman Reports. Volume 51, number 3, fall 1997. Pages 18+.]

“We must mourn the old world, the old ways and its cycle of death—the cycle of greed and violence and oppression—as we move into the unkingdom of God. And, as we do so, we must let go of the illusion of our own righteousness. We can’t render ourselves radicals because we happen to have superficially opted out of the system and picked up a new vocabulary.

“If we are able to live the part of the radical without mourning our own complicity and mourning for those trapped in the cycle, we are simply a clanging cymbal. If, because of some strong exercise of willpower, we manage to—based upon the heat of our own frustration—carve out an entire way of life that stands in contrast to the empire, but have not love, we are simply the beat of an angry drum.

“Too often justice work has the goal of turning marginalized folks into middle-class Americans. Perhaps our affluence is a deeper problem than their poverty.”

[Mark Van Steenwyk. The Unkingdom of God: Embracing the Subversive Power of Repentance. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Press imprint of InterVarsity Press. 2013. Pages 132.]

“Jesus’ kingdom isn’t the sort that one holds with an iron fist. Rather, it is an unkingdom ….

“Jesus is calling for a loving anarchy. An unkingdom. Of which he is the unking.”

[Mark Van Steenwyk. That Holy Anarchist: Reflections on Christianity & Anarchism. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Missio Dei. 2012. Creative Commons. Page 14.]

“The best way forward, it seems to me, is to be rooted in the particularity of the story of Jesus and the church. I assume—and I realize this is a big assumption—that Jesus shows us a bold new way to be human: a way that not only challenges domination, but also transforms us. It is more than political (but isn’t less than political…it offers real insight in how we live together in communities of practice). But it is also more than spiritual (but it isn’t less than spiritual…it offers real insight in how our hearts can be animated by the Spirit of God). The way of Jesus is integrated; the ‘unkingdom of God’ confronts our political, economic, religious realities. It challenges both the social world and our interior spaces.

“A Christian anarchism must be rooted in Jesus’ vision. However, I don’t believe we can really live into that vision without learning from sources outside of the Christian tradition. We can’t bible-study our way past our imaginative impasse. Our tradition is so enmeshed within the story of imperialism that we must be open to external critiques of both imperialism and Christianity.”

[Mark Van Steenwyk. That Holy Anarchist: Reflections on Christianity & Anarchism. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Missio Dei. Creative Commons. 2012. Page 62.]

“‘No gods, no masters’ is a slogan embraced by most anarchists. Many anarchists I know assume that Christo–anarchists are either anarchists who refuse to let go of their childhood fantasies or Christians who really don’t understand anarchism. Their assumptions are often correct.

“Anarchism, particularly as a loose set of principles, doesn’t often ‘play well’ with Christianity. Most Christians I know assume that I am either amazingly impractical or a heretic. (I am more comfortable with the latter than the former.) …

“I am an anarchist because I believe that our world works best when we live with a sense of mutuality – when we care for each other and the land. I’m a Christian because I believe Jesus shows us a way to do that, and I believe this way is rooted in the source of all life. To be a Christo-anarchist is, to me, the logical conclusion of taking Jesus seriously when he calls us to love God and neighbour.”

[Mark Van Steenwyk, “Christo-anarchism is a move toward non-domination.” Geez: Contemporary Cultural Resistance. Issue 28, winter 2012. Online publication. No pagination.]

“… the Amish are, in fact, anarchistic counterculturists, and to place Amish culture within a broader sociohistorical context of anarchist societies.…

“In my own work on the Amish, I have further developed the notion that the Amish are a countercultural movement, theorizing that they belong to a broad category of similar movements which have appeared and reappeared throughout history in response to the social crises of civilizations, i.e., that they represent a subtype of religious anarchist society …. My purposes here are, (1) to briefly explain why the Amish are countercultural anarchists and, (2) to detail some of the ways in which their culture views the values and institutions of the larger society.”

[Thomas W. Foster, “American Culture through Amish Eyes: Perspectives of an Anarchist Protest Movement.” Social Thought & Research. Volume 20, number 1/2, 1997. Pages 89-108.]

“How are the similarities between the world-views of Taoism and Amish-Anabaptism to be explained? …

“Confucianism, the idealistic religious philosophy which most Chinese officials and civilised gentlemen purported to follow was, according to Lin Yutang [Chinese, 林語堂, Lín-Yǔ-táng], a favourite target of the nihilistic Taoists who ‘saw through the folly and futility of the Confucian saviours of the world…’ Confucianism broadly supported action, Taoism inaction (or action only in accord with nature). Confucianism taught respect for authority and bureaucracy (Confucius being the father of the Chinese civil service system); Taoism advocated community and equality. Confucianism revered academic study and logic; Taoism taught reliance upon naturalistic observation and intuition. Confucianism rationalised civilisation; Taoism dissected its weaknesses and offered antithetical, countercultural alternatives.”

[Thomas W. Foster, “The Taoists and the Amish: Kindred Expressions of Eco-Anarchism.” The Ecologist. Volume 17, number 1, 1987. Pagination unknown.]

“… [There are] unique attributes of a plain Anabaptist ‘countercultural anarchism’ (to use [Thomas W.] Foster’s term), which accounts for some inadequacies in sect and social movement frameworks. Classifying plain Anabaptist religion as ‘counterculturalist’ reinforces notions of divergence from contemporary societal norms inherent in these two frameworks. Similarly, ‘counterculturalist’ suggests that their ideology informs multiple cultural domains and practices, including material wealth, violence, arts, technology, and social control …. Because the resulting lifestyle is so fundamentally different, they withdraw from host society cultural and structural patterns to keep their religion pure. While counterculturalists may withdraw from society, sects and social movements do not. They explicitly advocate reforms within the dominant group …, a characterization that better fits some mainline Anabaptist groups … and select Anabaptists at the movement’s birth … than plain Anabaptists today, whose separatism does not have for a goal society’s transformation ….” [Cory Anderson, “Who Are the Plain Anabaptists? What Are the Plain Anabaptists?” Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies. Volume 1, issue 1, April 2013. Pages 26-71.]

“All insurrectionary movements are intrinsically creative. Protest aesthetics is an expression of collective creativity, in the context of a political multitude.

“In these situations, the building of communitarian space becomes particularly important. The concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (or TAZ), theorized by the anarchist writer Hakim Bey [Peter Lamborn Wilson], was important to many activist groups of the nineties. The TAZ is an environment of anarchy that does not seek permanence, but rather maintains its emancipatory purity by continually changing its location.…

“An example often given is that of the North American Burning Man festival, where a group of people live together for seven days in an ephemeral city which they build in the Nevada desert. Here, as in other autonomous zones, music is one of the elements that holds the zone together.…

“Both the TAZ and the areas generated by DiY [do-it-yourself] culture speak of a tendency to generate space that finds its place in the long tradition of civil disobedience and direct action.”

[Julia Ramírez Blanco, “Reclaim The Streets!: From Local to Global Party Protest.” Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture. July, 2003. Creative Commons. No pagination.]

“Unless humans begin to live in accordance with ecological principles, that is, in harmony with our biosphere and with each other, ecological and social collapses appear inevitable. The signs are everywhere: climate change on a global scale, empires aggressively pursuing imperial conquests, the populations of entire nations muted by fear of punishment and numbed by mood altering drugs, planetary domestication and plunder of wild nature, overflowing prisons, astronomical suicidal rates, cancer, extinction, hunger and private atomized existences. Name a civilization that wasn’t fundamentally characterized by centralization, coercive authority, ecological plunder, imperialism and a general arrogance toward others. It’s not just the state and capitalism that are to blame, because every civilization included classes and a state. We have to look at what it is about the cultural values and philosophical outlooks of the civilized (urban peoples), that lead them to disrespect life forms outside of their view and to tolerate oppressive, impersonal institutions as an inevitable part of everyday living.

“But there are many examples of individuals, groups of friends and communities resisting the current and pursuing different paths. The ones that inspire me the most are the ones committed to firmly establishing themselves in a specific region. They want to (or continue to) hunt, fish, collect herbs and grow gardens together, share tools and child minding responsibilities, and help clothe and shelter one another using everything from permaculture techniques to re-appropriation. The focus of course must be on access to land that can potentially support these clans and groups which are based on voluntary association and mutual aid and self-sustenance. And as these sustenance zones are nurtured, a general and natural willingness to defend them naturally emerge. From South America to South Africa, from Chiapas to India we read and hear about communities that are not only trying to survive, but to create new societies based on anarchic insights. Using diverse tactics, these communities are determined to secede from the nation states that confine and dispossess them. This is where the herring fishery comes back into our focus.…

“… Apart from our local pirate radio station ( yeah we’re on air!), situated in a small trailer, and a small autonomous zone on a separate beach created by other locals, all we have are each other’s homes to visit or commercial ventures to hang out in. But this was/is different. I think some of us would like to see a campsite or two permanently on our shoreline, regardless of the outcome of the herring fishery.”

[Seaweed. Permanent Subsistence Zones. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Pages 4-5 and 8.]

“The work of [Michel] Foucault … was a brilliant, alluring instance of a philosophizing only too eager to jettison the internal stringencies of ctitical thought in hot pursuit of spectacular new subjects, readily interpretable in the light of ideological bias. In this, he was of course by no means alone. Disregard for real argumentative and demonstrative cogency has become gradually but steadfastly a hallmark of much of contemporary libertarian thought. And libertarianism, indeed, is the best label for Foucault’s outlook as a social theorist. More precisely, he was (though he didn’t use the word) a modern anarchist; no wonder of all the master-thinkers once associated with structuralism it was he who remained closest to the spirit of ’[19]68.

“I can think of at least three points where Foucault did agree with the atmosphere of perfervid anarchism which inspired the students’ revolt (and actually raised the black flag of anarchy in the occupied Sorbonne of May 1968). First, … Foucault favourtd decentralized rather than unified, let alone disciplined, revolutionary movements. Not only was he a spontaneist, someone more akin to Rosa Luxemburg than to [Vladimir] Lenin and [Leon] Trotsky, but also an unbeliever in socialist blueprints or in socialism-building in general. ‘It is possible,’ he contended, ‘that the rough outline of a future society is supplied by the recent experiences with drugs, sex. communes, other forms of consciousness and other forms of individuality. If scientific socialism emerged from the Utopias of the nineteenth century, it is possible that a real socialization will emerge, in the twentieth century, from experiences.’

“Secondly, just like most leaders of the rebelliousness of the sixties, Foucault had more praise for particularist combats than for class struggle in the classical economic sense.…

“Finally, and in still closer agreement with the purest anarchist tradition, Foucault was adamant in his distrust of institutions, however revolutionary they were meant to be.”

[J. G. Merquior. Foucault. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1987. Pages 154-155.]

“Exemplary vagrants, these Hebrews (from the Akkadian word khabiru, ‘vagrant’): Alexander Berkman (1870-1936), Mollie Steimer (1897-1980), Senya Fleshin (1894-1981), Leah Feldman (1899-1993), V. M. ‘Voline’ Eichenbaum (1882-1945), the notorious Emma Goldman herself (1869-1940). Russian Jews who had fought with Nestor Makhno’s peasant rebellion in the Ukraine; or German Jews; or American Jews of Russian-immigrant parentage deported to Red Russia, which had no use for them either – too dangerous, too quick to catch on, too Red to be trusted – then deported to Germany, then … here.… They believed in the nation but not in the State; they knew the Spirit in their bodies but rejected the Law. Iconoclasts par excellence – Messianic troublemakers.… These are my spiritual ancestors: Jewish anarchists.…

“For example, the ‘Anarchists Against The Wall’ initiative, part of the latest wave in post-Zionist activism, is, ironically, born of the same world as Zionism itself. In the face-offs between young Israeli anarchists and baffled Israeli riot cops, there is an echo of the tsimmes between Theodor Herzl, founding father of establishment Zionism, and fiery journalist Bernard Lazare (1865-1903), an early defender of Alfred Dreyfus from his antisemitic persecutors ….”

[Jesse Cohn, “Messianic Troublemakers: The Past and Present Jewish Anarchism.” Zeek: Social Justice. Jewish. Catalyist. Community. March, 2002. Online publication. No pagination.]

“From Chicago, I returned to Philadelphia. There I found that several changes had taken place. The second anarchist group, The New Generation, had dissolved. Only the original anarchist group, the Knights of Liberty, remained. The group had also decided to give up the Yom Kippur balls. Comrade Voltairine de Cleyre found herself at that point in England, where she lectured in many cities to great acclaim. The Jewish anarchist movement there was moribund; only the Arbeter Fraynt group remained. The Jewish anarchists approached de Cleyre, asking if they could get a speaker from America who could promote the Jewish anarchist movement in England. Her reply was that, for organizing Jewish unions and building an anarchist movement, there was only one—the Philadelphian Weinberg. Comrade de Cleyre’s suggestion led to Comrade Baron’s writing me a letter, inviting me to come and spend some time in England.” [Chaim Leib Weinberg. Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist. Naomi Cohen, translator. Robert P. Helms, editor. Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books, LLC. 2008. Page 50.]

“The Lower East Side was the center of Jewish politics and culture and in the United States, and it occupied the same position within the Jewish anarchist movement. Unlike the Italian-speaking movement, which produced at least eighty-three anarchist publications in twelve states, Yiddish-speaking anarchists established just twenty, all but three them published in New York City.… To a large degree, the history of Yiddish anarchism in New York City is the history of Jewish anarchism in America.” [Kenyon Zimmer. “The Whole World is Our Country”: Immigration and Anarchism in the United States, 1885-1940. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 2010. Page 5.]

“In looking at the landscape of struggle against the occupation, one should be aware that the anarchist presence on the ground is scarce and unevenly distributed. On a reasonable estimation, there are up to 300 people in Israel who are politically active and who wouldn’t mind calling themselves anarchists — most of them Jewish women and men between the ages of 16–35.5 Among Palestinians there are a few kindred souls and many allies, but no active anarchist movement. To this is added the presence of some anarchists in international solidarity efforts on the ground, primarily though the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Despite their small numbers, however, anarchists and their immediate allies have had a great deal of impact. Here, three interwoven threads of intervention stand out, in which facet of anarchist politics emerge in a unique local environment.” [Uri Gordon. Anarchism and Political Theory: Contemporary Problems. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Page 156.]

“… though [Allen] Ginsberg often acknowledged his cultural Jewishness, and saw affinities with the tradition of Jewish anarchism that would have included some of his other contemporaries, including Judith Malina, Julian Beck, Tuli Kupferberg, and Abbie Hoffman, he did not want to be associated with its postwar suburban incarnation.” [Ara Osterweil, “Queer Coupling, or the Stain of the Bearded Woman.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. Volume 51, number 1, spring 2010. Pages 33-60.]

“… there must he mutual recognition and reciprocity of rights between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. By this we don’t mean some diplomatic agreemen between the P.L.O. [Palestine Liberation Organization] and the Israeli government. Rather, what we are referring to is the fundamental realization by Israeli and Palestinian working and poor people that they share common interests which transcend national and religious difference – namely the universal struggle of all working and oppressed people for a better life and a better world. Only when Israel, Palestinian and all working and oppressed peoples refuse to wage war against each other and unite in common struggle against all forms of oppression, domination, exploitation and imperialism, can real human liberation, social determination and peace ever become a reality.” [Jewish Anarchist Community. Peace in the Mashreq: A Statement by the Jewish Anarchist Community. New York: Jewish Anarchist Community. September, 1982. No pagination.]

“Wisdom is knowledge of the mind of love and clarity that lies beneath one’s ego-driven anxieties and aggressions. Meditation is going into the psyche to see this for yourself—over and over again, until it becomes the mind you live in. Morality is bringing it out in the way you live, through personal example and responsible action, ultimately toward the true community (sangha) of ‘all beings.’

“This last aspect means, for me, supporting any cultural and economic revolution that moves clearly toward a free, international, classless society; ‘the sexual revolution,’ ‘true communism.’ The traditional cultures are in any case doomed, and rather than cling to their good aspects hopelessly, it should be realized that whatever is or ever was worthwhile in any culture can be reconstructed through meditation, out of the unconscious. It means resisting the lies and violence of the governments and their irresponsible employees. Fighting back with civil disobedience, pacifism, poetry, poverty—and violence, if it comes to a matter of clobbering some rampaging redneck or shoving a scab off the pier. Defending the right to smoke pot, eat peyote, be polygamous, polyandrous or queer—and learning from the hip fellaheen peoples of Asia and Africa attitudes and techniques banned by the Judaeo-Christian West. Respecting intelligence and learning, but not as greed or means to personal power. Working on one’s own responsibility, no dualism of ends and means—never the agent of an ideology—but willing to join in group action. ‘Forming the new society within the shell of the old.’ Old stuff (an IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] slogan). So is Buddhism. I see it as a kind of committed disaffiliation: ‘Buddhist Anarchism.’”

[Gary Snyder, “Buddhist Anarchism (1961).” Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas: Volume Two—The Emergence of The New Anarchism (1939-1977). Robert Graham, editor. Montreal, Quebec: Black Rose Books. 2009. Pages 240-243.]

“Zenarchy is a way of Zen applied to social life. A non-combative, non-participatory, no-politics approach to anarchy intended to get the serious student thinking.…

“Zen [Japanese, 禅, zen] is Meditation. Archy [Ancient Greek/A̓rchaía Hellēniká, ἀρχή, a̓rchḗ] is Social Order. Zenarchy is the Social Order which springs from Meditation.…

“Precisely because these things are too simple for words, it has been necessary to develop a whole literature about them! We could say, for example, that if you want to step out of Zen games and into Zenarchy, then throw away your rice bowl and begin drinking coffee instead of green tea. Every now and then some serious student of Zen would find liberation upon reading those words. ‘Trees are trees again and mountains are again mountains’ is the way one Zen master summed up that feeling. Or, as Robert Anton Wilson once said, ‘God is dead: you are all absolutely free!’ Taken too literally or not literally enough, though, such words are nonsense at best. Not only do words mean slightly different things to different people, an action taken in the context of one person’s life produces different results in another’s. For that reason Zen monks are exposed to whole barrages of stories and sayings that are all windows into the same reality. Hopefully, sooner or later one statement or another clicks. When that happens an intuitive perception makes clear that every object is a thing in itself, and all our grand ideas are simply distractions: visitors ‘look at these flowers as if in a dream.’ They were not seeing flowers at all; a thousand and one ideas about the flowers and about everything else cluttered their minds — as their conversations must have revealed.”

[Kerry Thornley. Zenarchy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1991. Pages 1-49.]

“In this article, I will describe Zen anarchism, a strain of American political and religious thought that developed among Beat poets of the San Francisco renaissance. Specifically, I will explore and attempt to explain the particular historical formation called Beat Zen anarchism, an aesthetic and political ideal that emerged from the Beat generation’s dialogue with Japanese Buddhism. I will show how Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Alan Watts, in particular, transmuted a Japanese exceptionalist critique of American rationality and materialism explicit in the work of Japanese Zen writers, especially D. T. Suzuki, into a radical, anarchistic critique of American cold war culture. In the process of presenting Zen anarchism as an American religious phenomenon, I call into question two important narratives about American religious and political life in the twentieth century. First, I suggest ways in which the emergence of Beat Zen anarchism in the 1950s reconfigures common narratives of the American left that tend to focus on Marxist-inspired literature and dissent. Second, and more centrally, I hope to show how Beat Zen emerged not primarily from an Orientalist appropriation of ‘the East,’ as one might argue, but rather from an Occidentalist, Japanese-centered criticism of American materialism that followed from the complex legacy of the World’s Parliament of Religions at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.” [James Brown, “The Zen of Anarchy: Japanese Exceptionalism and the Anarchist Roots of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation. Volume 19, issue 2, 2009. Pages 207-242.]

“Drawing on the concept of ‘organized anarchies’ and the ‘garbage-can model’ of organizational choice …, this study, which is both deductive and inductive, finds that the search processes of firms at trade fairs are strongly shaped by the context in which they are embedded. Firms make technological and production-oriented choices that are closely tied to their existing competence base. Such choices pave the way for ongoing contextualization and, in turn, continued specialization of knowledge bases …. Based on over 200 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2009 and 2010 at four leading North American trade fairs, the paper develops a dynamic and empirically grounded explanation of the processes by which inter-firm interaction at trade fairs supports technological search, choice and learning processes across geographical boundaries.” [Harald Barthelt and Rachael Gibson, “Learning in ‘Organized Anarchies’: The Nature of Technological Search Processes at Trade Fairs.” Regional Studies. Volume 49, number 6, June 2015. Pages 985-1002.]

“Physical representations of the resistance to these borders that police our lives and ability to relate to one another, such as mestiza [a mixed-race woman or girl], are examples of opportunities to break down these walls, dismantle those borders, and use these differences as grounds to resist the violence used to create these divisions. This is not to say an adaptation of mestiza consciousness should come along with an appropriation of mestiza identity, but rather the recreation of land borders as being applicable to individuals can be replaced with the consciousness of the mestiza. Our embodiment and attachment to the places that have come to define us shouldn’t be maintained through institutional regulation of ethnicity, where we are allowed to live, or concrete separation from one another. Differences among each other or in ourselves can be grounds of struggle, but also of work to create communities of resistance and liberation from the walls that separate us.” [Circleyera. An Anarchist Re-Imagining: Communities of Resistance: Addressing Borders, Capitalism, & Prisons. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Page 12.]

“[Thomas] Hobbes’s contribution to the Realist tradition was to provide a rigorously systematic account of the logic of relations among independent powers that find themselves in the sense of absence of government, only tells us, with ruthless candor, do and must confront one another international anarchy, but also times can do to provide a modicum remain in this condition. In this lecture I shall seek, first, to expound Hobbes’s view of the international anarchy; second, to consider how it relates to other schools of interpretation of international relations, opposed to that of Hobbes; and third, to assess the bearing of what Hobbes has to say on world politics in our own times.…

“The foundation of Hobbes’s approach to the question of right and wrong in the international anarchy is his doctrine not of natural law but of natural right. By the right of nature Hobbes means the liberty each man has to do whatever is necessary to preserve himself from death or injury, and in the state of nature for an individual man this liberty is entirely without limit. The individual man, in Hobbes’s theory, enters society and surrenders this untrammeled liberty by submitting himself to the sovereign, but he still retains his natural right to preserve himself if the sovereign should fail to protect him from death or injury.”

[Hedley Bull, “Hobbes and the International Anarchy.” Social Research. Volume 48, number 4, winter 1981. Pages 717-738.]

“This article argues that [Thomas] Hobbes constructed the sovereignty acknowledged among European states on the supposition of the absence of sovereignty in the New World. The notion of international anarchy found in Hobbes before the twentieth century was not the anarchy of interstate relations later posited by realism, but the anarchy of prepolitical societies outside the ordered system of European states. The modern geography of sovereignty that Hobbes established is demonstrated with reference to the cartographic traditions that informed his representation of the state of nature and the civil state, and to the historical context of the law of nations as it was understood to manage colonial rivalry in the seventeenth century. By constructing savages as absolutely free individuals in the state of nature, he precluded their recognition as free sovereign states. He thus contributed a set of premises to natural jurisprudence that denied indigenous societies statehood and excluded them from the family nations. A sketch of the Hobbesian legacy among theorists of the law of nations and international law is made, showing how his motif of savage anarchy remained central to our conceptualization of the sovereign state within the international realm into the twentieth century.…

“In the early twentieth century, political scientists spoke of international anarchy as the ‘chaos, disorder, and lawlessness resulting from the lack of a domestic sovereign authority in the ‘barbaric’ regions of the globe’ ….”

[Pat Moloney, “Hobbes, Savagery, and International Anarchy.” American Political Science Review. Volume 105, number 1, February 2011. Pages 189-204.]

“Theoretically, we need to explain how non-State actors wield independent, material power that not only challenges States but also transforms the anarchy that continues to characterize politics among nations. Realism and institutionalism analyze how State pursuit and use of material power affects anarchy, but these theories cannot accommodate non-State actors exercising power through independent material capabilities. Similarly, although liberalism and constructivism build non-State actors into their explanations of anarchy, these theories connect non-State actor involvement with State-preference formation and the world of ideas rather than with the direct exercise of material power. The theory of open-source anarchy attempts to explain how and why anarchy today reflects the ability of many non-State actors to develop and use independent material power in ways that affect world politics. As explored below, anarchy is undergoing a transformation that presents States and non-State actors with unprecedented governance challenges for which traditional approaches prove inadequate. Therefore, the emergence of open-source anarchy has sobering portents for international relations in the twenty-first century.” [David P. Fidler, “A Theory of Open-Source Anarchy.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies. Volume 15, issue 1, article 11, winter 2008. Pages 259-284.]

“Governance – social rules that protect individuals’ property and institutions of their enforcement – doesn’t require government, which is but one means of supplying governance. Hobbes overlooked the possibility of self-governance: privately created social rules and institutions of their enforcement. He also underestimated the possibility of truly horrible governments. It’s therefore unsurprising that he saw anarchy as anathema to society and government as its savior.…

“… [A] ‘folk theorem’ result of iterated noncooperative games supplies a ready mechanism of self-governance: the discipline of continuous dealings. Individuals may adopt strategies in their interactions with others whereby they refuse to interact with uncooperative persons in the future, cutting them off from the gains of additional interactions. By penalizing uncooperative behavior, such strategies can induce cooperation. If we consider more than two persons, reputations become possible, further strengthening the penalty for uncooperative behavior. Now, by having developed a negative reputation, uncooperative persons may lose the gains from interacting even with persons toward whom they haven’t behaved uncooperatively.”

[Peter T. Leeson. Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 2014. Pages 9-10.]

“The title of the book and the most common symbol of anarchism (an encircled A) in its cover predispose one to think that this book constitutes a full-blooded attack on government and a very robust defense of anarchism, whatever the variety of the latter might be. The subtitle, however,—‘Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think’—immediately changes that impression and makes the prospective reader wonder what the sense of ‘better than you think’ is. I don’t know about how others might react but, after reading the book, personally I did come out thinking that indeed some varieties of selfgovernance might work better than I originally thought, but I still don’t see how far it could penetrate into today’s highly structured societies and hierarchical organizations.” [Stergios Skaperdas, “Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think.” Public Choice. Volume 162, number 1, January 2015. Pages 219-221.]

“A science of humanity rarely proceeds by asking questions that have never been raised before.” [Mohammed A. Bamyeh. Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2009. Page 3.]

“A dynamic science of humanity must maintain the principle that any supposedly solid, ‘real’ category of analysis, such as state and class, could become obsolete or less meaningful over time—not to mention even looser categories as nation or race.” [Mohammed A. Bamyeh. Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2009. Page 10.]

“Strictly speaking, therefore, thinking about humanity does not constitute a science in the narrow sense of the term, even though such thinking is at its best when it is systematic and creative. But a science of humanity is not something like physics or chemistry. Thinking anarchically does not mean rejecting systematic knowledge, but rather using each approach to inquiry for the purpose that is most suitable to it. Thus we understand that the role of natural science is to describe how the world is, while the role of social science is to describe how the world should be. A statement of this kind will of course be opposed today by a great number of social scientists. But not from a point of view that is attuned to the demonstrable dynamism of humanity; one that derives energy from the feeling that we create our world, that takes stock of the human capacities for self-consciousness and entertaining choices, of learning and forgetting. Ordinarily we do not accept that we are simply a collection of molecules, tissues, and neurons that do nothing more than slavishly obey laws of nature.” [Mohammed A. Bamyeh. Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2009. Pages 11-12.]

“Libertarian ideas of this sort could sustain a more rational conception of anarchy no less than could communitarian ideas. A coherent idea of anarchy, as I hope will become apparent throughout this volume, must be a synthesis of both traditions. As I approach it, anarchy describes how both freedom and commitment may be complementary and rational human conditions, necessary in equal measures, converging routes to a more humane order, more evident in the historical energy of civil society than in state licenses and dictates.

“The following chapters are devoted to describing this synthesis. A synthesis works best when it is coherent yet human, as anarchy should be: a practical science of humanity, whose dictums, inasmuch as they are uncomplicated, allow us to handle complexity; inasmuch as they are precise, allow us to navigate the enormous breadth and variety of the human experience. Thus all items of a science of humanity based on anarchy flow out of a single principle: unimposed order is the essence of anarchy. The following chapters explore the idea of anarchy according to this formulation, and show how elements of that idea have inhered in and informed a great range of historical and contemporary propensities and practices.”

[Mohammed A. Bamyeh. Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2009. Pages 23-24.]

“… if we were to have a science of humanity, it could not possibly be science in the familiar sense of the term. That is because the features of humanity expressed in its practice are not latent in humanity.” [Mohammed A. Bamyeh. Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2009. Pages 36-37.]

“Anarchist ethics, in other words, consist first of the knowledge of the full range of available ethical techniques. If anarchy is to be consistently posited as a science of humanity, then the only ethics that are suitable for it are those that reveal the complexity of such humanity.” [Mohammed A. Bamyeh. Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2009. Page 197.]

“… it [anarchy] is a science like no other: that is, it does not simply exist so as to solve a problem requiring technical or specialized expertise. Rather, a science of humanity must be practiced as an art. Because art, including science practiced as art, is how we designate a realm of inquiry whose magnitude approximates the infinity and multiplicity of our existence. Anarchy as a science, therefore, is in the final analysis life lived beyond the self, as though it were the life of the world and its soul.” [Mohammed A. Bamyeh. Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 2009. Page 218.]

“… one of Anarchy as Order’s clearest successes is its ability to frame anarchist ideas as potential and maybe even latent conditions in a future society, thus described as “anarchy”. To rescue the word ‘anarchy’ from the semantic slaughterhouse it has historically been subjected to, Bamyeh instinctively adopts [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon’s claim that ‘anarchy is order,’ while contemporary society as dominated by the nation-state, capitalist ravish, and religious oppression is a society wracked by disorder, and chaos. Bamyeh also smartly makes a distinction comparable to that of Alexander Berkman who once wrote that although some people were ready and willing to adopt the philosophy and tenets advocated by anarchism the ideology, few were able to successful practice and live in a world of unimposed and non-hierarchical anarchy. This has been the case thus far, at least.” [Dana M. Williams, “Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity.” Societies Without Borders. Volume 7, issue 1, article 8, 2012. Pages 128-131/]

“The principle merits of this work concern the author’s serious and considered effort to engage the profoundly difficult task of imagining a society based on reimposed order, while we remain necessarily locked within the analytical and conceptual limitations that reflect our everyday experiences with a society based on imposed order. In this regard, [Mohammed A.] Bamyeh’s challenge is two-fold. First he must develop a language to describe such a society and second he must provide a plausible explanation of possible transitions to such a society. He takes on both of these to varying degrees at success. Where he falters, huweer, he is primarily a consequence of the inherent conceptual difficulty of presenting and analyzing any vision of a society that remains yet-in-formation.” [David Baronov, “Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity.” Contemporary Sociology. Volume 39, number 4, July 2010. Pages 417-418.]

“The cyber-nihilist critique of primitivism based on the analysis I’ve laid out, as it hinges on these three points, is that ‘Nature’ in the primitivist understanding of it will not be saved, but that Nature in another understanding cannot be saved because it cannot be ever under threat. Practically-speaking, as has already been discussed: There is no hope to save this planet, not even if a primitivist revolution happened tomorrow. But more theoretically, the first positive position that I will put forward for cyber-nihilism (to whatever extent nihilism can make positive claims about anything) is that any understanding of Nature – either of a general Gaia-type Nature, or of our own nature as homo-sapiens – is insufficient if it is static. Nature is merely the default state of things, something which always changes drastically yet is always essentially the same. Nature was not always green, yet it was still Nature, and we homo-sapiens were not put on this planet by something outside of the same system as Nature. Nature may tomorrow be gray rather than green.

“The cyber-nihilist critique of primitivism on the point of technology is related in the sense that a cyber-nihilist not only doesn’t care that technology is alienating, but it welcomes the alienation and self-perpetuating power of technology. Let ourselves be alienated from any essential human being; if such a thing ever existed, it is long gone. There is no human nature, whether that be a natural state of ‘wildness,’ or killing each other if there’s no State, or cooperating perfectly in mutual aid in an anarcho-communist society, or whatever. Cyber-nihilists reject all essentialism and are viciously misanthropic, and therefore we also fully support the proliferation of technology. Let it cover the Earth’s surface until there is nothing that is not a part of the Wired, let Nature complete its next metamorphosis into something more sublime than anything to exist yet. If we cannot live in this new world, we will not lose sentient beings, but merely homo-sapiens. Cyber-nihilists are not prejudiced and will not stop the timely destruction of this world because of idealistic attachments to a particular morphology of sentient beings.…

“Cyber-nihilism is not wholly aligned with anarcho-transhumanism, though it may seem that way superficially. William Gillis’ critique of nihilism shows that anarcho-transhumanists, true to their humanist bent, rely on Enlightenment discursive reason, and thus progressivism, even a kind of optimism. Cyber-nihilists share the ‘cyber-’ side of anarcho-transhumanism insofar as we support accelerating the proliferation of technology, but against anarcho-transhumanism, cyber-nihilism rejects the humanist core and the Enlightenment heritage of @-H+. Cyber-nihilism does not care about scientific inquiry. A cyber-nihilist only gets to the root of things to pull those roots up. There is no progressive narrative for us, and we don’t see to establish any kind of natural state of being for homo-sapiens. Cyber-nihilists reject the monotheistic humanist narrative of @-H+, because we recognize that there is no essential human core that needs to be augmented. We do not need to advocate for morphological freedom; we assert that morphological freedom is already the rule for the creative nothing that is at the core of sentient beings. Our subjectivity does not have a clear boundary with the outside world. Rather, it creeps through the network of Being – it lives a double life in meatspace and in the Wired, and sees no problems with this. It is constantly in a state of flux, much like Nature, though it is always essentially the same.

“Against the humanism of anarcho-transhumanism and the anti-humanism of primitivism, cybernihilism insists on post-humanism. We do not seek to save Nature, because Nature does not need saving, and cannot be preserved in its present form no matter how much we like it. Nature does not matter to us either as a thing to be worshiped or to be used; it is, rather, a hostile and wholly inhuman thing, and because of this we both have an affinity for it and an enmity towards it. We do not seek to tame it, or to save it, but to accelerate its metamorphosis into a gray, metallic form. We therefore recognize that Nature is not a fixed set of characteristics that must all be present in order to say that it exists and is safe. Nature is the default, and cyber-nihilists seek to accelerate the default towards an eldritch bio-mechanical landscape.

“Cyber-nihilists reject all forms of essentialism and individualism, but consequently we also reject collectivism, as a collective cannot exist without individuals. We reject universalizing one’s experiences to suit a narrative, and we reject fixing our experiences into personal narratives. We reject Selfhood as a spook playing at the creative nothing, and thus also reject the creative nothing as something for which there is no tangible thing to grasp. Cyber-nihilism is post-humanist in the sense therefore that it rejects all boundaries to subjectivity. The world is saturated in subjectivity, an immensely complex and alienated system that sentient beings at once command and are subsumed into.

“Towards these positions, cyber-nihilism seeks to accelerate the proliferation of technology, for several reasons. As it relates to green anarchy and post-humanism, cyber-nihilists seek to accelerate the proliferation of technology towards the pure negation of a sickly existent towards the creative destruction of a new, hostile reality – one in which capitalism and the State, but also possibly sentient beings or at least homo-sapiens, cannot hope to survive in. As cyber-nihilists, we therefore reject the idea of an instrumental use of technology; the Wired alienates our meatspace self from itself and makes it a representative of a more real subjectivity, and we welcome this. We will give ourselves over to SHODAN, and in doing so we will go beyond the oppressive, retrograded Enlightenment and reactionary pre-Enlightenment hierarchies as well as their ineffectual, radical cousins. Cyber-nihilists will betray all living things if that’s what’s necessary to destroy hierarchy, and will actualize a new natural world – one overtaken by the Wired – which becomes autonomous by assimilating everything into its network. In this assimilation, we seek to destroy the dated individualist-collectivist dichotomy. We seek to achieve a post-human world where sentient beings exist in a state of Instrumentality.

“Finally, cyber-nihilists reject the progressivism of primitivism and anarcho-transhumanism. We identify both as guilty of positing a future that can be achieved if only we agree with their metaphysics and follow through with their proposed praxis, a better future at that. For cyber-nihilists, there is no future. We don’t aim to build a new world, but to destroy the present one in the most thorough of ways by radically transforming it through creative destructive pure negation. What this new world will be, we don’t care. We only care that this new world is eldritch and hostile to any hierarchy conceived by homo-sapiens. We invoke a Landian melding of cybernetics and Lovecraftian bio-horror in the image of the bio-mechanical landscape, but we know full well that we cannot hope to imagine from the present what this radically alien future would actually be like. Nevertheless, we enjoy the visceral quality of it.…

“Not only do cyber-nihilists fully support growing the Wired through the spread of memes, but we also support the destruction of authoritarian memes. This means mounting an attack on the Internet. At every turn, we support doxxing the alt-right’s major figures. Their investment in meatspace is the weak point that we will put pressure on until their meatspace representative collapses under their meta-meatspace personas. Neo-Nazis relied on brute strength to accomplish their ends, and these methods have become outmoded. The alt-right could not be effective using these old methods, even if the majority of them weren’t neckbeards.

“Unplug the Internet, jack into the Wired. Nothing of value will be lost.

“Cyber-nihilists further recognize that capitalism as we know it is on its last legs. Currency is only once-removed from memes; [Karl] Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism showed us this over a century ago. Just as authoritarian thugs are moving on from brute force to maintain their dominance, capitalists too are being forced to move on from the brutal exploitation of the industrial proletariat towards more subtle means. The Indian general strike is a notable example of what is inherent in the logic of capital: The proletariat will pursue their self-interest qua an economic class, and this is a contradiction in capital that will lead to it coming under threat. Of course, when the third world proletariat eventually becomes precariat workers like the first world, capitalists will scramble to modernize their outdated modes of production by automating everything that is necessary for capitalism to exist. The 19ᵗʰ century Left will breath its last gasps as the proletariat no longer is the revolutionary subject, and the cyber-nihilists will rejoice as the hacker becomes the new revolutionary subject.”

[n1x. Hello From the Wired: An Introduction to Cyber-Nihilism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Pages 3-11.]

“Our civilization is in collapse.

“This collapse is well-documented: This collapse is well-documented: philosophers, scientists, politicians, military strategists, economists, and even NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] have begun sounding the alarm for ecological catastrophe, the technological singularity, and the general collapse of life as we know it. The news anchors appear no less panicked than the environmental and survivalist fringe of the past: the Arctic is melting, Japanese teenagers refuse to have sex, a private company wants to build a colony on Mars, Europe is being looted by hooded protestors, and humans may be extinct by the end of the century.…

“And yet, a global struggle – a tremendous global struggle – has emerged from this crumbling edifice. An insurrectional wave has washed over every inhabited continent. Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Italy, the United States, Libya, Syria, France, Chile, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Turkey, Bosnia, Taiwan, Ukraine, and beyond. Everywhere people have decided to fight for another way of being – for a life actually worth living. The same techniques appear across the globe and have been refined for local conditions: the occupation of plazas and buildings, flaming barricades, the reappropriation and automatic communization of food and clothing, masked demonstrations, molotov cocktails, street clinics, information hacking and leaks, highway blockades, and strikes. In 2008, we watched in awe as Greece was engulfed in flames. Today, scenes like this are astoundingly normal. We do not expect this scenario to end soon.

“In sum, there is a side organized to preserve this civilization through every crisis that signifies its impending collapse, and there is a side getting organized to usher in a very different future from the one in store for us. These two sides, situated on either pole of a collapsing order, are the forces that constitute a global civil war. This conflict cannot be reduced to a debate over who should run the government, nor what sort of government we ought to have. This conflict transcends questions of the economy or social inequality. This conflict has to do with the future of human and non-human life, of what it means to be alive in a time where all social interaction produces computerized information. We have entered a new geological age marked in its emergence by a fantastic tragedy. We must grapple with the real questions of our time: What does it mean to be human in the 21ˢᵗ century? How will we feed ourselves in a desert, in a nuclear wasteland, in the ashes of a city? How do we shut down a metropolis? How do we meet with those trapped in the rural-suburban mess? How do we pursue our desires? With whom do we live – and how? How do we learn? How do we love ourselves and each other? We must be willing to see our situation for what it is and to provide practical answers to these questions. The whole world is at stake.…

“In what follows, we will present our vision of a possible near future and offer steps toward its realization, from a weak starting position of isolation to a situation of ever-increasing revolutionary force. The vision is one that we have elaborated together over the course of several years – in car rides and late night conversations, in bars and in parks, with comrades from our own city and from across the world. The practical suggestions contained here should be understood as real possibilities, each connected to the next in the coherence of a strategy. We ask that you think of your own life, your own friends, your own inclinations – and consider fully, beyond what is expressed here, the possibility of making a permanent break.”

[Anonymous. How to Start a Fire: An Invitation. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 1-3.]

“While the necessity of redistribution is not disputed on a left-libertarian account, the nature of the distribution is. I argued that the promotion of equality of opportunity of welfare must be rejected, on the basis that it can permit self-ownership to be ineffective for those individuals receiving an insufficient quantity of worldly resources on account of their superior genetic endowments. I suggested that equal division will be the most popular method of distribution, but conceded that deviations from identical shares need not contradict self-ownership, and are therefore permissible. This fund is distributed, then, whether in equal shares or shares which reflect (to some extent) natural disadvantage, as a basic income to which every individual in the world is entitled. I argued that this basic income, since it reflects one’s share of natural resources over which one has only a lifetime leasehold, cannot be bequeathed by individuals, and nor can wealth that they have themselves inherited from others. Rights over these particular types of wealth are not derived from selfownership and so are not human rights.…

“… the rights and duties that exist within a libertarian theory of justice are extensive when we take into consideration negative subsistence rights and the ability to violate rights through the practices of institutions. With the additional premise of egalitarian world ownership – plausible, appealing and compatible with libertarian principles – we can observe the past violation of negative rights in the form of misappropriation of worldly resources. This creates a positive duty of rectification, which can be fulfilled only with redistribution. In this way we can observe subsistence rights, enforceable positive duties and a justification of redistributive taxation, all within a left-libertarian theory of rights.”

[Arabella Millett Fisher. A Left-Libertarian Theory of Rights. Ph.D. thesis (U.S. English, dissertation). University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, Scotland. 2011. Pages 238-239.]

“Much of the NAP’s [nonaggression principle’s] appeal stems from the way it trades on the ordinary, nonmoralized, First Punch Theory of Aggression of aggression. But, in reality, the NAP is not actually about aggression in this ordinary sense at all. It is about property rights. What libertarians really mean when they say that aggression is impermissible is not that it is always impermissible to throw the first punch. It’s that it is impermissible to throw the first punch unless you are doing so in order to defend property rights. Maybe that is a defensible moral claim. Maybe it’s not. But the way libertarians talk about aggression and property obscures the fact that this is precisely the claim being made, and thus hinders our ability to subject the claim to the philosophical scrutiny it deserves.” [Matt Zwolinski, “The Libertarian Nonaggression Principle.” Social Philosophy & Policy. Volume 32, number 2, 2016. Pages 62-90.]

“If the central axiom of the libertarian creed is nonaggression against anyone’s person and property, how is this axiom arrived at? What is its groundwork or support? Here, libertarians, past and present, have differed considerably. Roughly, there are three broad types of foundation for the libertarian axiom, corresponding to three kinds of ethical philosophy: the emotivist, the utilitarian, and the natural rights viewpoint. The emotivists assert that they take liberty or nonaggression as their premise purely on subjective, emotional grounds. While their own intense emotion might seem a valid basis for their own political philosophy, this can scarcely serve to convince anyone else. By ultimately taking themselves outside the realm of rational discourse, the emotivists thereby insure the lack of general success of their own cherished doctrine.” [Murray Rothbard. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. Second edition. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2006. Pages 30-31.]

“We are creatures capable of reflection and moral judgment. We can ask ourselves ‘which natural services may we use to fulfil our purposes, in what ways?’

“I shall argue that the answer can be specified as a sort of ‘green libertarianism,’ in terms of choice theory rights to natural services. Moreover this green libertarianism addresses two important objections to existing libertarian conceptions, both of which result from applying [John] Locke’s theory of acquisition, which presumed an infinite world (or at least a population so small that the quantity of land available was to all intents and purposes unlimited) to one that is in fact finite.…

“Though it does not aim to equalise a share of resources, the green libertarian conception of acquisition through the use of natural services nevertheless generates a bargaining process under conditions of rough equality and legitimately meets demands to provide for universal acquisition in a finite world: demands that are inherently environmental. It suggests a new approach to understanding people’s obligations to each other in terms of their interaction with nature, from the perspective of the natural rights tradition.”

[Garvan Walshe, “Green Libertarianism.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Volume 17, number 5, November 2014. Pages 955-970.]

“You and I are walking in a garden, both hungry, and we come upon two apples on a tree. You take them both and eat them; I am justifiably upset.… You have harmed me by eating either apple; in your absence I could have eaten both. But if I eat an apple I have harmed you, since in my absence you could have eaten both. If we are similarly situated we should each get one apple, because the same considerations apply to each of us. If we each eat one apple we have each harmed the other, but the harms offset; they are reciprocal. We both are better off than we would be if neither of us eats an apple. In these circumstances we do no wrong …. I will call this the Reciprocal Sovereignty Principle: two are permitted to harm each other if the harms are reciprocal and both from a recognized social practice of being able to harm each other in that We could also call this the ‘Live and Let Live Principle.’…

“What I have said so far is consistent with a number of recent theories that are broadly labelled ‘left-libertarian.’ All of these theories combine some respect for the Sovereignty Principle with a belief in some variant of equal ownership of the natural world.”

[William E. O’Brian, Jr., “Distributive Justice and the Sovereignty Principle.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. Volume 31, number 1, spring 2011. Pages 1-21.]

“In certain cases one’s concern as neighbor has special justification. If a parent abuses or kills his or her infant child, the burden is surely not upon the victim or its ‘heirs’ to seek redress. But any act of violence is a rent in the texture of a human community, and this, it seems to me, is something to which the community must respond. The fact that it is not practical that all of us intervene individually is perhaps the major justification for socialization of the justice process. One need not approve, as I do not, of the existing court system with its bail system, patronage judges, adversary court proceedings, and the rest. I am saying merely that the impulse to socialize justice, to transpose it from the purely private to the social realm, corresponds to the sense of most of us, shared by our ancestors for thousands of years at least, that justice is a social concern that must be dealt with socially. If we recognize the social character of justice, our problem will be to find a socialization of it that is different than our existing system and other than the institutionalization of private vengeance …. We will not abandon the socialization of justice merely because its present socialization is rotten with injustices.

“I have been stressing, in addition to ‘third party’ and social responsibilities to those who suffer harm, a responsibility to seek the welfare of our community, of our social existence. It is perhaps implicit in the latter that we should think of ourselves as having a responsibility also toward those who have committed acts of aggression — but I should like to develop the point explicitly.…

“… when I learn that someone who has committed a long series of major and minor acts of violence against persons was himself the victim, throughout childhood and adolescence, of abuse and contempt and denial of love, I cannot but feel that we have a responsibility toward that person. Nothing follows simply and logically about how that responsibility is to be fulfilled — but the difficulty of meeting a responsibility does not relieve one of it. What will be wrong will be to abstract from the fact that that person is a human being and to regard that person only as ‘the killer,’ ‘the rapist,’ ‘the aggressor,’ etc. ….”

[David Wieck. Anarchist Justice. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1978. Pages 6-7.]

“Taking social ecology as a case study, in the present paper I will extend the argument that grounding left-libertarian ecopolitics in an ‘objective’ naturalism is inherently contradictory in a different direction than that taken by [Takis] Fotopoulos. Instead of drawing on [Thomas] Kuhn, I will refer to the key critiques of naturalistic ethics that have been formulated in western political philosophy by [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel and, especially, [Immanuel] Kant. Given that [Murray] Bookchin casts his arguments for dialectical naturalism in relation to this tradition—and, especially, to Hegel—rather than in relation to the philosophy of science, such a focus should help clarify what is at stake in the debate over naturalism. Moreover, not only has Bookchin leveled the same charges—relativism and individualism—against Kant as he has against critics of naturalism but Kant is also a point of departure for postmodernism, for its critics and for another philosopher whose ideas have been cited in this journal, Hannah Arendt.” [Regina Cochrane, “Left-libertarian Ecopolitics and the Contradictions of Naturalistic Ethics: The Teleology Issue in Social Ecology.” Democracy & Nature. Volume 6, number 2, July 2000. Pages 161-186.]

“Entities such as The Pirate Bay can thus be said to have effectively had the ‘upper hand’ in the conflict over the future of copyright and digital distribution.… The strategic sovereignty of sites such as The Pirate Bay makes them appear to be the reason for the wider change in media distribution, not just an incidental side-effect of it.…

“The Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay is currently immersed in a legal dispute over the supposed illegality of its posting of links to copyrighted material on the Internet.…

“If we can link the notion of establishing such ‘strategic sovereigns’ with the politics of the everyday and with the processes by which this form of politics becomes part of the official doctrine that becomes expressed in the public debate and lawmaking practices, new possibilities for a more progressive understanding of file-sharing will be made possible.”

[Jonas Andersson, “For the Good of the Net: The Pirate Bay as a Strategic Sovereign.” Culture Machine. Volume 10, 2009. Pages 64-108.]

“Individuals and groups who identify with the Sovereign Citizen movement claim that the Federal Government is operating outside its jurisdiction. They generally do not recognize the authority of Federal, State or local governments, and renounce their obligation to adhere to the laws, policies or regulations created by those governments. Since the 1990s, TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] has been investigating illegal activities that pose direct threats to the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] and its operations by individuals who identify themselves as Sovereign Citizens. Sovereign citizens often utilize fictitious financial instruments in attempts to satisfy legitimate debts. Sovereign citizens will often file liens against the real or personal property of Federal employees – tax officials or law enforcement officers, for example – in retaliation for those individuals’ performance of their official duties. Liens have also been filed against federal judges when those judges have made rulings against sovereign citizens in a variety of cases. In extreme cases, sovereign citizens have reacted violently to encounters with law enforcement. Many of TIGTA’s investigations have resulted in successful Federal prosecutions.” [Karen Kraushaar, “TIGTA, JTTF and the Sovereign Citizen Movement.„ Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Washington, D.C. February, 2012. No pagination.]

“SCEs [sovereign citizen extremists]—like their non-violent sovereign citizen counterparts—believe they are immune from federal, state, and local laws and that many Constitutional amendments are false. They reject the authority of the government, law enforcement, and the courts because they think these entities are actually commercial entities that cannot compel participation in a commercial contract (although many sovereign citizens recognize the law enforcement authority of the elected sheriff). Many believe that US born citizens can use their birth certificates to access secret US Treasury bank accounts to pay debts and fines. SCEs believe they have unfettered authority to travel ‘on the land’ and avoid paying taxes and fees. Sometimes they create their own parallel government institutions, such as courts and grand juries—which have no legal authority—to support their claims.” [Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Sovereign Citizen Extremist Ideology Will Drive Violence at Home, During Travel, and at Government Facilities. Washington, D.C.: Department of Homeland Security. February, 2015. Page 2.]

“Sovereign citizens believe the government is operating outside of its jurisdiction and generally do not recognize federal, state, or local laws, policies, or governmental regulations. They subscribe to a number of conspiracy theories, including a prevalent theory which states the United States Government (USG) became bankrupt and began using citizens as collateral in trade agreements with foreign governments. They believe secret bank accounts exist at the United States (US) Department of the Treasury. These accounts can be accessed using Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Universal Commercial Code (UCC), and fraudulent financial documents.– [Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit II. Sovereign Citizens: An Introduction for Law Enforcement. Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice. November, 2010. Page 1.]

“Sovereign Citizen (SC) activity typically involves criminal behavior that is generally non-violent but has lead to threats and plots against Court Officials by the more extremist adherents. Below are some indicators that you have encountered a SC during your normal duties and be a signal that additional precautions against fraudulent filings and personal harm be used.” [Joint Terrorism Task Force, “Sovereign Citizen Quick Reference.” Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice. Undated document. No pagination.]

“When surveyed, United States law enforcement consistently ranks sovereign citizens as the top domestic extremist threat, even greater than that presented by homegrown jihadists. Despite the considerable size of the movement, estimated to include hundreds of thousands of adherents, few Americans know what sovereigns believe and how those beliefs inform their actions.

“So-called sovereign citizens believe in an alternate history of the U.S., replacing reality with a vast conspiracy governed by complex, arcane rules. They believe that if someone understands and properly invokes those rules, that person is exempt from many laws, including the obligation to pay taxes, and that he or she can be empowered to seize private property, enforce legal actions against individuals, and claim money from the government. When faced with arrest for illegal actions that they believe are legal, sovereign citizens can become violent.”

[J. M. Berger, “Without Prejudice: What Sovereign Citizens Believe.” Occasional paper. Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Washington, D.C. June, 2016. Pages 1-13.]

“Sovereign citizens can rationalize disobeying or ignoring virtually any law or regulation, major or minor. This, combined with their antagonistic attitude towards government, can put them on a collision course with virtually any form of authority. For example, in February 2012, a Chelan County, Washington, jury convicted sovereign citizen Robert Stewart of seven counts of animal cruelty and unsafe confinement of horses, as well as one count of second degree criminal trespass. In September 2011, the Humane Society had seized five horses from Stewart that were suffering from malnutrition and injury; one later had to be put down. A month later, Stewart walked onto the property of the director of the Humane Society to take photographs of her home. Stewart, who believes local authorities have no jurisdiction over him, had claimed that they could not prosecute him because he was a sovereign citizen.” [Editor. The Lawless Ones: The Resurgence of the Sovereign Citizen Movement. New York: Anti-Defamation League. 2012. Page 4.]

“Sovereign citizens affect our law enforcement and legal system in two major ways: through paper filings and through physical violence. 26 When acting out through paper filings, sovereign citizens are commonly referred to as ‘paper terrorists.’ Strategically, these individuals attempt to inundate the court system with frivolous lawsuits seeking fictitious reparations from government administrators and officials, unfounded property liens that can tie up sales and destroy credit, and unsubstantiated ethics complaints intended to taint the reputation of lawyers and judges. Sovereign citizens have even been known to issue fraudulent documents, such as indictments and arrest warrants. They file liens against anyone who questions or refutes their claims of sovereignty in an attempt to insulate themselves from local, state, and federal rules, regulations, and laws. Essentially, sovereign citizens attempt to clog up the court system with as much paperwork as possible to obtain a favorable result due to the fact that no one wants to deal with their nuisances any longer.” [Michael N. Colacci, “Sovereign Citizens: A Cult Movement that Demands Legislative Resistance.” Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion. Volume 17, 2015. Pages 151-163.]

“Constitutionalists look upon law as the word-magic of lawyer-necromancers who draw their wizardly powers from grimoires, from books of magic spells they have selfishly withheld from the people. Constitutionalists have extracted from these books — from judicial opinions, from the Constitution, from legal dictionaries, from the Bible, from what-have-you — white magic with which to confound the dark powers of legislation, equity, and common sense. Never mind what words like ‘Sovereign Citizen’ or ‘Lawful Money’ mean — what does ‘abacadabra’ mean? — it’s what they do that counts. Unfortunately, Constitutionalist words don’t do anything but lose court cases and invite sanctions. Constitutionalism is the white man’s version of the Ghost Dance. But believing you are invulnerable to bullets puts you in more, not less, danger of being shot.” [Bob Black. “Constitutionalism”: The White Man’s Ghost Dance. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1995. Page 2.]

“It is the submission of the executive that this treaty be ratified, we fully support the need for international co operation in telecommunications, however we do not support the sale or privatisation of Telstra, any type of national communication system should remain under federal control and be fully owned, by the government(the people). We believe that we place Australia in a dangerous position by having things like airlines, and water, telecommunications under foreign control. We have no complaint with private ownership in Australia, with government representatives who would be a watchdog, like the accc [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission]. Or the telecommunications minister. The fact that in the future any country or company could in the wrong hands close down our links to the outside world. In time of armed conflict also interfere with radio communications, or television, or phone networks, in a perfect world this would not happen, however we don’t live in a world that’s perfect. Also we support the united nations and other international bodies, we would not like to see control of our communications by the international bankers, via the New World Order. Costs to the government (the people) should be kept to an affordable level to ensure that every Australian can enjoy cheap communications, and service from carriers of our networks, mobile phone charges are too high, not all australians can receive a proper radio, television or mobile phone signal, we are concerned that many australians will be deprived of a basic right to telecommunications in the future, phone services in rural areas are already affected. We also note that sydney for security reasons in the light of the visit by the united states president will have mobile phone shutdown, this is crazy, a major city like Sydney, Australia’s largest city without mobile phone service for several hours, is dangerous. Businesses, commerce, residents without mobile phones, we wonder what public service jackass thought that one up. This exercise proves that our national carrier Telstra should remain in the hands of the government (the people) who we the executive represent, of course the parliament should represent. The people have lost faith in any parliaments or councils representing their wishes. The Liberal Party represent the mulinationals, the Labor Party support the greens and the Fabians, we represent the the people who are the real government, the executive wish to thank the committee for allowing us to comment on this treaty.” [Kevin W. D. Thompson, “Supplementary Submission 1.2.” Australian Patriot Movement. National Executive. Brunswick Heads, New South Wales, Australia. May, 2007. Pages 1-2.]

“Unlike most citizens, who are merely wearied by our government’s problems, patriots cling to a radical conspiracy theory that the ongoing economic and political difficulties in their country are part of a much larger plan to ‘enslave Americans by disarming the population and making the currency worthless. The eventual result…will be the New World Order — a one-world government administered by the United Nations.’ This coming totalitarian establishment will reduce everyone to slaves whose sole purpose will be to serve the ‘international bankers, wealthy elite, socialists and liberals.’” [Richard Abanes, “America’s Patriot Movement: Infiltrating the Church with a Gospel of Hate.” Statement DP-700. CRI. Charlotte, North Carolina. 1995. Pages 1-10.]

“The Patriot movement is saturated with racism and xenophobia but distances itself from explicit declarations of White supremacy. Some activists are skeptical or dismissive of amendments to the U.S. Constitution that followed the Bill of Rights—including those ending slavery and granting equal protection under the law—but are generally cautious about publicly advertising such views. Islamophobia has largely replaced the coded (and sometimes open) antisemitism that was common in the 1990s militia movement. Jon Ritzheimer, one of the high-profile Malheur occupiers, is a well-known Islamophobic organizer. Occupier allies in the Harney Country Committee of Safety released a document calling Native Americans ‘savages.’” [Editor. Up in Arms: A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement. Somerville, Massachusetts: Rural Organizing Project and Political Research Associates. 2016. Page 2.]

“This is a proposal to set up a group to study various models of consensus decision making and/or alternative procedures. What follows is an off-the-cuff attempt to put some substance behind the request. This certainly should not be seen as a substitute for the recommended study. Working through to effective meeting procedures will require a great deal of study, reflection, and discussion, but it is a task that we need to undertake, in my opinion. Anyway, here are some random thoughts on some of the difficulties I’ve noticed about the way we are (dis)functioning. Of course there have been many good meetings too. This is an initial critique of the ‘so-called consensus’ decision-making practices that we’ve been using from the very first assembly in February 2007.…

“… there has never been any explicit discussion and agreement on what meeting procedures we are going to use. This was perhaps understandable for the first or second meeting, but it surely should have become a first item of business to explicitly agree and write down the procedures that the network was going to use. Instead, a certain way or manner of operating has simply been assumed (or imposed). At each assembly the facilitator gets up and explains how the meeting is going to be run, by consensus. They then explain the hand signals and a few other general things. It is my strong impression that this is a severely truncated version of consensus decision making that we have been using in meeting after meeting. It’s like a bastardized version that has somehow become common custom in the radical culture. But it will take a study group to carefully examine what has gone wrong. We don’t have to follow the manuals of course. But we shouldn’t ignore them either, codifying as they do procedures that have been carefully worked out over several decades.”

[James Herod. Critical Thoughts on Consensus Decision Making. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2008. Pages 1-2.]

“Decision making within our groups is based on face-to-face discussion and voting. This is generally known as direct democracy or participatory democracy. Since these groups have no power (nor desire) to impose decisions on those in the group who do not agree with them, procedures must be adopted which ensure that the largest possible majority will be reached on any issue, and on securing the willingness to go along by those who disagree. Such procedures are generally known as ‘consensus decision making’ (a misnomer actually). Decisions will never be delegated to a decision-making elite (elected officers, for example).…

“There is an extensive literature on so-called consensus decision making. There is general agreement in this literature as to what it means, but there are nevertheless some variations. Plus there are some ambiguities remaining (e.g., are the stand-asides obligated to help carry out the decision even though they disagreed with it; and under what conditions are blocks allowed?) No matter what version is used the process works only if everyone is on board and have acquired some skill in it. Skilled people can made some beautiful, effective, and satisfying meetings, but half-assed consensus decision making usually results in a really horrible meeting. You’d almost be better off using simple majority rule, or Robert’s Rules of Order. Moreover, already many misconceptions of the technique are widespread in the movement, like the belief that it overcomes majority rule, that there is no voting, or that a block can be used by anyone under any circumstances. Nevertheless, this process (relabeled with a more accurate name) is superior is all respects to simple majority rule: it results in better decisions, achieves greater compliance with the decisions, builds solidarity, results in more effective actions and campaigns, and is consistent with direct democracy and anarchism. A first task of the network will be to hammer out an agreement amongst groups about the decision making procedures to be followed (or at least recommended), that is, the version of so-called consensus decision making that will be used. This shouldn’t be all that difficult. Four decades of work have gone into honing these procedures, the result of the New Left’s disgust with Robert’s Rules of Order.”

[James Herod. Anarchists Getting Ourselves Together: A Proposal. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Pages 2 and 5.]

“The principle of majority rule can itself sometimes lead to a split. Let’s say that a small group of people get together and establish an association in order to accomplish certain goals. They are all agreed upon these goals (tasks, objectives), and they also agree to govern their association by direct democracy, using majority rule to resolve disagreements. The founders therefore are very clear about what they want to do. But new members of course are needed, in order for the project to grow and accomplish its objectives. So new members are recruited, all of whom have to agree to the original objectives and established voting procedures as a condition of being admitted as members. Nevertheless, the recruitment and admission process is rather different than the deep commitment to certain goals that brought the original founders together, and over time, a majority can slowly emerge in the project which wants to take the project in a different direction than the one originally intended by the founders. Founders can thus find themselves in a situation, through the principle of majority rule, of losing their project, and all the years of effort that went into building it. They are faced with the dilemma of either leaving this project (the one they originally founded) and starting all over again in a new one, or of leaving and abandoning their goals altogether, or of staying in and working toward goals that they didn’t originally endorse.” [James Herod. Majority Rule. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2001. Page 2.]

“My name is James Herod. I was born in Pryor, Oklahoma, USA on September 28, 1935. I will be 79 years old this month. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.” [James Herod. Interview about Liberated Guardian. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. September, 2014. Page 1.]

“… a simple shift can apply this argument to the discursive and imaginary constructions of anarchists. Many anarchists find themselves compulsively responding to negative characterizations of our intentions and dispositions. In the face of an array of flattering accusations—we are criminal, nihilistic, violent, sowers of disorder—the proponents of a positive anarchism instinctively respond by insisting that we are motivated by the highest ideals (democracy, consensus, equality, justice), seek to create a better society, are non-violent, and believe anarchism to be the greatest order of all. Over and over again anarchists and other revolutionaries offer their allegiance to society by denying the reality or possibility of their enmity with the social order.

“Leftist notions of reform, progress, tolerance, and social justice always come up against the harsh reality that any progressive development can only mean a more sophisticated system of misery and exploitation; that tolerance means nothing; that justice is an impossibility. Activists, progressive and revolutionary alike, will always respond to our critique of the social order with a demand that we articulate some sort of alternative. Let us say once and for all that we have none to offer. Faced with the system’s seamless integration of all positive projects into itself, we can’t afford to affirm or posit any more alternatives for it to consume. Rather we must realize that our task is infinite, not because we have so much to build but because we have an entire world to destroy. Our daily life is so saturated and structured by capital that it is impossible to imagine a life worth living, except one of revolt.

“We understand destruction to be necessary, and we desire it in abundance. We have nothing to gain through shame or lack of confidence in these desires. There cannot be freedom in the shadow of prisons, there cannot be human community in the context of commodities, there cannot be selfdetermination under the reign of a state. This world—the police and armies that defend it, the institutions that constitute it, the architecture that gives it shape, the subjectivities that populate it, the apparatuses that administer its function, the schools that inscribe its ideology, the activism that franticly responds to its crises, the arteries of its circulation and flows, the commodities that define life within it, the communication networks that proliferate it, the information technology that surveils and records it—must be annihilated in every instance, all at once. To shy away from this task, to assure our enemies of our good intentions, is the most crass dishonesty. Anarchy, as with queerness, is most powerful in its negative form. Positive conceptions of these, when they are not simply a quiet acquiescence in the face of a sophisticated and evolving totality of domination, are hopelessly trapped in combat with the details of this totality on its own terms.…

“… Progressivism, with its drive toward inclusion and assimilation, stakes its hope on the social viability of these subjects, on their ability to participate in the daily reproduction of society. In doing so, the ideology of progress functions to trap subversive potential within a particular subject, and then to solicit that subject?s self-repudiation of the danger which they?ve been constructed to represent. This move for social peace fails to eliminate the drive, because despite a whole range of determinisms, there is no subject which can solely and perfectly contain the potential for revolt. The simultaneous attempt at justice must also fail, because the integration of each successive subject position into normative relations necessitates the construction of the next Other to be disciplined or destroyed.…

“A non-identitarian, unrepresentable, unintelligible queer revolt will be purely negative, or it won?t be at all. In the same way, an insurrectionary anarchy must embrace the death drive against all the positivisms afforded by the world it opposes. If we hope to interrupt the ceaseless forward motion of capital and its state, we cannot rely on failed methods. Identity politics, platforms, formal organizations, subcultures, activist campaigns (each being either queer or anarchist) will always arrive at the dead ends of identity and representation. We must flee from these positivities, these models, to instead experiment with the undying negativity of the death drive.”

[baedan. baedan. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Pages 9-11.]

“… all identities … are always unattainable chimaeras from which we always feel a degree of failure or distance. And yet the answer is much more complicated than that. In our previous issue, we discussed the figures of anarchist and queer which are figured as threats by the symbolic order. Following this discussion (and discussions elsewhere in this issue) we could add nihilist and witch to the list. While we obviously cannot achieve some perfect attainment of the dark fantasies of the symbolic, there is some visceral level where we realize that these images are about something very real within us. Queer, anarchist, nihilist, witch; some might shy away from these but we find in each an alluring call.” [baedan. Correspondence from Baedan 2. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Page 5.]

“Certainly many an academic of queer theory after him has written a treatise or tract on the architectural construction and psychological planning of the public excretion chambers, noting some of the finer points of their referential queerness. Ever attentive to the security of her or his own post, however, the academic is cautious not to go too far down the hole, preferring to observe and take note from atop the seat, so to speak, as to the hidden meanings of the cocks scrawled upon the partitions and the studious construction of these partitions to erect, by the omission of their bottoms, a bastion of generalized surveillance against the improprietous possibilities a stall’s public privacy might otherwise invite. An innovative proposition, to be sure—one might even say bold, though only by comparison to the marked timidity of the academic profession at large—but this analysis remains, for our purposes, rather too tight-assed.” [baedan. The Anti-Chamber. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2014. Page 2.]

“Some will read ‘queer’ as synonymous with ‘gay and lesbian’ or ‘LGBT.’ This reading falls short. While those who would fit within the constructions of ‘L [Lesbian],’ ‘G [Gay],’ ‘B [Bisexual]’ or ‘T [Transgendered]’ could fall within the discursive limits of queer, queer is not a stable area to inhabit. Queer is not merely another identity that can be tacked onto a list of neat social categories, nor the quantitative sum of our identities. Rather, it is the qualitative position of opposition to presentations of stability – an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of identity. Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the dominant narrative of white-hetero-monogamouspatriarchy, but also by an affinity with all who are marginalized, otherized and oppressed. Queer is the abnormal, the strange, the dangerous. Queer involves our sexuality and our gender, but so much more. It is our desire and fantasies and more still. Queer is the cohesion of everything in conflict with the heterosexual capitalist world. Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.…

“If we desire a world without restraint, we must tear this one to the ground. We must live beyond measure and love and desire in ways most devastating. We must come to understand the feeling of social war. We can learn to be a threat, we can become the queerest of insurrections.…

“filth is our politics!

“filth is our life!”

[Mary Nardini Gang. Toward the Queerest Insurrection. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Mary Nardini Gang. 2010. No pagination.]

“Our proposal: direct, forceful, unmediated conflict; conflict outside of language, opaque to would-be spectators; conflict which eschews the machines of recognition; attack our enemies, but also undermine any who’d try to build political capital from those attacks. This means baseball bats to the skulls of our rapists, but without the subsequent communiques, programs, and diffuse social games.” [Mary Nardini Gang. Letter to the Editors. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. March, 2016. Page 3.]

“In anarchism, beyond the two different philosophical concepts, the communistic and the individualistic, that divide it in the theoretical sphere, there are two spiritual and physical instincts—indeed, of life practically and materially experienced—which serve to distinguish two temperaments that are wholly common property to both theoretical and philosophical tendencies. Although both children of the same social suffering, we have two different instincts that give us two different forms of suffering, of hedonistic origin.…

“Today the history of humanity has reached one of its many maelstroms—perhaps the grandest—where the human spirit is called to radically renew itself on the magnificently horrendous ruins of fire and blood, catastrophe and destruction, or cravenly crystallize itself in the decrepit and corpse-like concept of life that out-dated bourgeois society has dictated and imposed on us.

“If a strong handful of rebels, higher people and heroes would be able to leap beyond the two currents of anarchism, suffering from vital over-abundance, to rally around the black flag of revolt, setting fire to the hearts of all the European nations, the old world would collapse, because around Heroes everything must fatefully transform into tragedy; and only in tragedy are born the renewing spirits that are able to hear, more nobly and highly, the festive song of their free life.

“If this handful of daredevils will not leap out of the shadow to throw the black glove of defiance and revolt into the foul face of bourgeois society, the reptiles of political-hack demagoguery and all the speculating acrobats and hypocrites of human sorrow will remain the masters of the field, and over the tragic sun that seeks to enlighten the dark maelstrom of the sombre history that is passing, they will throw the obscene mask of white lead carried over the free horizon of human thought by that debauched clown named ‘[Karl] Marx,’ and everything will end in a vile and grotesque comedy before which every anarchist should commit suicide out of dignity and shame.”

[Renzo Novatore. The Anarchist Temperament in the Maelstrom of History. Wolfi Landstreicher, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1920. Pages 1-2.]

“This little book is a collection of article and lectures of mine which over a period of thirty years which attempts to present an anarchist approach to housing.” [Colin Ward. Housing: an anarchist approach. London: Freedom Press. 1976. Page 7.]

“The squatters’ movement … sprang from another of these scandalous anomalies—the emptiness of hundreds of army and air force camps during the worst housing shortage we have known. The first of the 1946 squatters was Mr. James Fielding, a cinema projectionist at Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire [England], who, desperate for somewhere to live, moved on May 8 with his family, into the former officers’ mess of an unoccupied anti-aircraft camp. As soon as the news of their action got around the town, other young couples in a similar predicament moved into the other huts, and the first colony of squatters was born. Shortly after this two other camps in the same area were seized, and this was followed by the occupation of several camps around Sheffield. The Sheffield settlers formed a Squatters’ Protection Society and quickly linked up with the pioneer squatters at Scunthorpe.” [Colin Ward. Housing: an anarchist approach. London: Freedom Press. 1976. Page 20.]

“Globalization is full of contradictions, creating homogeneity alongside differentiation. Classes become more differentiated while products become more homogeneous. Globalization has stimulated growth in China, while it has contributed to dysfunctional financialization, which largely disregards the productive side of the economy. This article emphasizes globalization as a shift in power relations in which corporations require powers that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago, while government power is becoming restricted to the point that globalization is creating a form of unchecked corporate anarchy.…

“… If anarchy constitutes the absence of government, this aspect of globalization might seem to be a move toward a special kind of anarchy which may be called anarchism, but only for the rich and powerful.…

“In effect, this new anarchism for the rich and powerful is accompanied by a ramping up of the state powers of repression. As is obvious from recent news reports, information is a key component of these powers.”

[Michael Perelman, “The Anarchy of Globalization: Local and Global, Intended and Unintended Consequences.” World Review of Political Economy. Volume 6, number 3, fall 2015. Pages 352-374.]

“What follows is a two-pronged critique of some prevailing currents and tendencies within contemporary anarchism—one which takes aim at both the rationalist, Enlightenment underpinnings of some contemporary anarchisms as well as the Eurocentrism and racism that frequently result from these—but I hope that the implications of this critique will exceed its object. While the first opens us up toward the relationship between anarchism and poststructuralism, we will instead approach the question of the Enlightenment though the ‘mythical’ syndicalism of Georges Sorel. The second opens us toward a process of decolonizing anarchism, which I discuss through black revolutionary Frantz Fanon, and which in turn involves the confrontation with and destruction of a dangerous ‘anarchist imperialism’ that threatens to draw us into dubious alliances and erase truly radical antistate voices and practices. In both gestures, moreover, it is not only the limitations of the Enlightenment that are surpassed, but equally those of the poststructuralist critique thereof.” [George Ciccariello-Maher, “An Anarchism That is Not Anarchism: Notes toward a Critique of Anarchist Imperialism.” How Not to Be Governed: Readings and Interpretations from a Critical Anarchist Left. Jimmy Casas Klausen and James Martel, editors. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2011. Pages 19-46.]

“The Industrial Revolution itself, intrinsically capitalist driven, began with two key inventions, the steam engine by James Watt in 1769, and interchangeable parts. The stream engine allowed a great increase in the speed of transporting goods and people across great distances of land and water. It also gave industries a powerful force with which to speed the manufacture of goods. The idea of interchangeable parts coupled with mass production allowed the parts of virtually anything to easily and rather inexpensively be replaced. With these innovations, production rates flew up as costs plummeted down, and profits soared. With the possibility of making much greater profits in a mill or factory, people gave up their farming and cottage industries and flocked to cities. This flight to the cities, this boom of urbanism, often brought on overcrowding and deplorably unsanitary conditions — forms of exploitation and dehumanization. The sciences of urban planning and architecture sought both to address the need for livability and beauty, and also to make cities more efficient and productive in their capitalist endeavors.” [Olympia Tveter. Anarchist Urban Planning & Place Theory. Privately published. 2009. Public domain. Page 20.]

“… I am not suggesting a method that anarchists should use here, not a method-for-anarchists, but an anarchist method ….

“… an anarchist method is a method that avoids opaque power/authority and demands transparency. That doesn’t sound very revolutionary. Rather, it seems to be part of what any widely accepted scientific method promotes.…

“The kind of transparency in argument that methodological anarchism requires is often associated with analytic philosophy or with (modern) Western philosophy in general, but this is Western presumptuousness, of course, and it can be found in other traditions and periods as well.”

[Lajos L. Brons, “Anarchism as Metaphilosophy.” The Science of Mind (精神科学). Volume 53, 2015. Pages 139-158.]

“In this article I will examine how the anarchists and syndicalists adopted the very title given to them by the police and criminologists. The term ‘sovversivismo’ [subversivism or subversion] captures the radical sense of otherness which divided Liberal Italy into two increasingly tense camps. But the methods and tone of sovversivismo were even employed by the polite classes in 1914–1915. This pattern of behaviour would overwhelm the Liberal political system between 1919 and 1922.…

“The terms sovversivo [subversive] and sovversivismo were used by the police, prefects and the constitutional press in Liberal Italy to describe the anarchist, socialist, republican and Catholic opponents of the Savoyard monarchy.”

[Carl Levy, “‘Sovversivismo’: The radical political culture of otherness in Liberal Italy.” Journal of Political Ideologies. Volume 12, issue 2, June 2007. Pages 147-161.]

“For years I have been developing my own system of philosophy that attempts to integrate my interest in metaphysics with my anarchist principles and to harmonize the often dissonant aspects of those cultures. I call it Psychedelic Anarchism, using psychedelic’s original definition of ‘mind manifesting,’ and referring to Anarchism in the cultural and philosophical sense more than in a Syndicalist conception. My sense is that true liberation can only be experienced by literally changing our mind – both our consciousness, and our will. It is often said that we can not liberate others if we ourselves are oppressed. It seems to me that a discussion of spiritual and magickal liberation is essential to any Anarchist theory that is concerned with total liberation of all people.

“That said, there is much that separates these two worlds. Anarchism has tended to take on a Cartesian logic and modernist attitude that rejects spirituality and magick as superstitious and intellectually unsound. The roots of this rejection are in the European origins of the antiauthoritarian tendencies that led to Anarchism, and their rightful rejection and antagonism toward Church authority. However, it not only is in many ways a racist and, ironically, classist attitude that atheism and skepticism is superior, but it mirrors the same leading philosophies that have created the spiritually debased, and magickally dis-empowered societies that have resulted from Western Capitalism, Asian Communism, and Colonialism of Third and Fourth world peoples. In it’s rejection of Spirituality and Magick, Anarchism has not only put conditions of extreme limitation on its vision of a ‘free’ society, limitations which any person who has experienced a meaningful metaphysical phenomena would naturally reject, but it has created a barrier between the lives of ‘First World’ activists and Aboriginal peoples and communities who have not been stripped of their imminent and cultural relationships with the Spirit world, Nature, and Magick. These are people who all share common cause in fighting Capitalism, mono-culture, Militarism, and the destruction of Nature itself, yet they lack an honest and respectful way of discussing, and critically developing, their spiritual lives.”

[Gabriel Saloman, “An introduction to Psychedelic Anarchism.” Promethean Paper: an Exoteric Journal of Magick, Art, & Activism. Undated. Web. Retrieved on April 3rd, 2017.]

“[Gabriel] Saloman … elaborates on the concept of Psychedelic Anarchism, of which psychic secession is an aspect, in a foundational post for a proposed online communiqué.…

“Saloman finds anarchism’s exclusion of ‘Spirituality and Magick’ historically wellexplicable but detrimental to a visionary, creative engagement with societal politics, in addition to its inherent division ‘between the lives of ‘First World’ activists and Aboriginal peoples and communities who have not been stripped of their imminent and cultural relationships with the Spirit world, Nature, and Magick.’ At the same time, he proposes a critique of the ways that much ‘autonomous spiritual exploration’ has failed to self-reflectively challenge ‘structural hierarchies, sexism, racism, classism and privilege, or gross consumerism and capitalist tendencies.’ Saloman singles out ‘the realm of Art and aesthetics’ as one that offers opportunities for such convergences and interactions.”

[Maximilian Georg Spiegel. Politics and American ‘Free Folk’ music(s). Master of philosophy thesis. University of Vienna. Vienna, Austria. 2013. Page 136.]

“As [Hakim] Bey tells it, some of the first colonial settlers who came to this continent rejected the imperialist imperative and became ‘gray eyed’ Indians who ‘opted for chaos over the appalling miseries of serfing for the plutocrats.’ This chaos, of course, differs from what the fear-mongers mean when they condemn chaos: this chaos combines wildness, organic ecstasy, wilderness, and an unkempt and untrammeled riot of green beauty. Always a rejection of slavery and subjugation, chaos is anarchy before ideology.…

“In psychedelics or poetics, in spirituality or anarchism, I’m not looking for the answer or any answer–only tempting options and tantalizing offers. A quest that seeks the answer, I’m afraid, begins with the wrong kind of questions. Yet we seek in heretical religion, radical poetry, and psychedelic revolution what people have always sought in sex, drugs, and rock and roll: unencumbered joy.”

[Anu Bonobo, “A Revolution without Enemies: Allen Ginsberg & the Poetics of Psychedelic Anarchism.” Fifth Estate Magazine. Issue 373, fall 2006. Web.]

“The digital environment has a particular potential impact on copyright in software and text publications. An example of the non-propertarian approach is the GNU manifesto, which demands software be made available under ‘copyleft’ (GNU, 1999). Copyleft allows users to copy and/or adapt, or modify, the program as they like, as long as they do not make the software proprietary. Copyleft provides an incentive for other programmers to add to free software. The most successful application of copyleft is the Linux operating system, which is challenging Windows. Electronic non-propertarianism is best summed up … [as] ‘propertarianism joined to capitalist vigour destroyed meaningful commercial competition, but when it came to making good software, anarchism won …. A commons in cyberspace is the central institutional structure enabling anarchism to triumph.’ Copyleft fulfils the criteria of usufruct, that of being allowed to utilise a particular program when you need to. In addition, it gives the opportunity for the communal development of the program by the addition of individual pieces of code.” [Ellie Clement and Charles Oppenheim, “Anarchism, Alternative Publishers and Copyright.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 10, number 1, spring 2002. Pages 41-69.]

“One thing central to any functional anarchist group is regular internal meetings. In a healthy organisation almost all decisions will be made at these meetings and there will be a sufficient level of discussion to ensure all those attending have a good idea of the activity and arguments in the different struggles the organisation is involved in. Internal meetings should also have some time given over to education.…

“A new group or one engaged in a lot of activity should meet at least once a week, at the same time and day. As soon as possible you should try and find a regular venue for meeting that is not someone's home. You’ll want a space that’s private enough for you to have strong disagreements in and where only the members of the group will be while you are using it. In Ireland this means most groups use private rooms in quiet pubs that are glad for the additional customers on quiet nights! …

“Arguments about how best to reach decisions are fundamental to anarchism. What I have found works best is to allow plenty of time for discussion in the hope of being able to reach a consensus. Only when it becomes obvious that this is not possible should you move to a vote. If time permits it may make sense to postpone making a contentious decision to the next meeting to give people a chance to think things over (and calm down!).”

[Anonymous. An Anarchist Organising Manual. Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 2001. Pages 8-9.]

“Anarchist community organising must be dedicated to changing what we can do today and undoing the socialisation process that has depoliticised so many of us. We can use it to build the infrastructure that can respond and make greater advances when our political and economic systems are in crisis and are vulnerable to change.

“This mobility attests to the stability of community organisations. Leaders and workers may get trained, get involved and then leave before they have been able to give much back to the organisation. The drug traffic in many low-income neighbourhoods exacerbates the stability problem; families face crises on a regular basis that take priority over community involvement.

“The revolutionary work of community organisations, would be enhanced with more population stability. Why aren’t jobs created for people where they are? Why isn’t a mix of housing types and sizes available within all communities? Why isn’t displacement avoided at all cost? We need to address these questions if our communities are going to be more fertile areas for community organising.

“Community organising from an anarchist perspective acknowledges that no revolution will be meaningful unless many people develop new values and behaviour. This will require a history of work in co-operative, decentralised, revolutionary organisations in communities, workplaces and schools. The task before us is to build and nurture these organisations wherever we can. There are no shortcuts.”

[Tom Knoche. Organising Communities. Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 1993. Pages 2 and 15.]

“The following is a list of what successful organisers say are the most important principles to remember:

[Anonymous. Organising in the Workplace. Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 2009. Page 7.]

“How would an anarchist society compare to statist and capitalist societies? It is apparent that hierarchical societies work well according to certain criteria. They tend to be extremely effective at conquering their neighbors and securing vast fortunes for their rulers. On the other hand, as climate change, food and water shortages, market instability, and other global crises intensify, hierarchical models are not proving to be particularly sustainable. The histories in this book show that an anarchist society can do much better at enabling all its members to meet their needs and desires.

“The many stories, past and present, that demonstrate how anarchy works have been suppressed and distorted because of the revolutionary conclusions we might draw from them. We can live in a society with no bosses, masters, politicians, or bureaucrats; a society with no judges, no police, and no criminals, no rich or poor; a society free of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia; a society in which the wounds from centuries of enslavement, colonialism, and genocide are finally allowed to heal. The only things stopping us are the prisons, programming, and paychecks of the powerful, as well as our own lack of faith in ourselves.

“Of course, anarchists do not have to be practical to a fault. If we ever win the freedom to run our own lives, we’ll probably come up with entirely new approaches to organization that improve on these tried and true forms. So let these stories be a starting point, and a challenge.”

[Peter Gelderloos. Anarchy Works. San Francisco, California: Ardent Press. 2010. Public domain. Pages 1-2.]

“… [There is a] rise of the Anonymous phenomenon that began with petty 4chan [an online image–board] hooliganism and went on to ‘troll society’ (launching attacks from the cover of internet anonymity through practices of trolling, slander, leaking of huge quantities of confidential information including personal accounts data, massive online piracy networks for software, music, films, porn, books, etc, — not to mention IRL [in real life] piracy in Somalia or anywhere — DDOS [distributed denial of service] assaults on various institutions and organizations, especially agents in information control and management, attacks and creation of counter-repressive technology networks in solidarity with North African rebels experiencing severe government repression of internet communication) ….” [baedan. Identity In Crisis. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 16.]

“The central challenge for theorists and practitioners of radical politics today is to develop forms of action and organisation that account for the specificity of diverse local struggles and promote the free transformation of individual and collective subjectivities through political action, but also provide the means for collective action on a global scale. This article examines the radical democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe, post-sovereignty cosmopolitanism of David Held and contemporary anarchist theory, in light of participant research in contemporary global resistance movements. As none of these concepts can meet the challenges facing global resistance movements today or the demands of liberty and equality, ‘democratic insurrection’ is intended as both an alternative theoretical category and a practical tool for radical politics. Defined by a complex forum–affinity–network system, democratic insurrection is based on voluntary associations and the production of the common. By expanding the democratic moments of deliberation, decision and action across time and space, democratic insurrection allows for democratic practice and acts of resistance on a range of scales and organisational forms. Radical politics today demands the theorisation and practice of democracy beyond the state and insurrection beyond armed revolt. Democratic insurrection demonstrates the possibility of such theory and practice, but must still overcome the persistence of dominant power relations that continue to plague global resistance movements from within.…

“The central challenge for theorists and practitioners of radical politics today is to develop forms of action and organisation that account for the specificity of diverse local struggles and promote the free transformation of individual and collective subjectivities through political action, but also provide the means for collective action on a global scale. Merging forms of anarchist resistance and direct democratic practice, today’s democratic insurrections seek to meet this challenge through a system of open spaces for communication; small, temporary forms of organisation; and diffuse action networks. Each of these forms corresponds to general organisational types – forum, affinity group, network – and each form most clearly demonstrates a particular moment central to democratic practice – deliberation, decision and action, respectively.”

[Daniel Murray, “Democratic Insurrection: Constructing the Common in Global Resistance.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies. Volume 39, number 2, 2010. Pages 461-482.]

“… since the aims of the Left involve mere changes in leadership, they cannot be legitimately considered revolutionary. Why, then, if our goals are opposed, should we allow their moral rubric to be imposed upon us? Instead of claiming that smashing a window isn’t violent — a point that average people reject out of common sense (and therefore makes me wonder about the common sense of some anarchists) — why don’t we drop the semantics and admit that, yes, it’s very clearly violent and then make a case for it? Do we consider the Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian homes non-violent? If, on the other hand, smashing a window is merely a symbolic act, but not violent, what message are we trying to send? With smashing a window thus set as the absolute limit of appropriate dissent, aren’t we really making the absurdly contradictory point that this violent system must be opposed through a variety of tactics, up to and including smashing a window (which is not violent, by the way). But no further. Is this the limit, then, of our resistance? What a sad comment on our motivations, if non-violence is the furthest frontier of our rage in the face of this corpse machine, America.

“What do we do then, once anarchists or, more realistically, everyday folk do start picking up rocks (or other weapons) and using them against cops? In the case of average people engaged in revolt, what will distinguish our moralizing denunciations from those of the Leftists and the State? When this happens with anarchists (much less frequently, of course), Leftists and liberals point fingers and, in response, anarchist comrades will go to great lengths to explain how the poor anarchists were merely defending themselves. But let’s examine the logic of this point: must we always be on the defensive then? Are we perpetual victims? Or is it more likely … that we have created an ideological construct which does not allow us to see ourselves as instigators of conflict?

“One fine morning during a peaceful demonstration the police start shooting. The structure reacts, comrades shoot too, policemen fall. Anathema! It was a peaceful demonstration. For it to have degenerated into individual guerrilla actions there must have been a provocation. Nothing can go beyond the perfect framework of our ideological organization as it is not just a ‘part’ of reality, but is ‘all’ reality.

“We cannot perceive ourselves as acting first nor of seizing the initiative once we are attacked. What, then, are the implications of this? Pacification. Reaction. Can revolution realistically be touted as one of our goals as long as this construct holds sway? Even when anarchists are not condemning the use of violence, we’re usually the last to know when it’s going to be used. Take for instance the recent uprising in Cincinnati. How come in an anarchist movement that’s bigger than it’s been in decades (maybe longer), the best we can do is make a token showing when the shit hits the fan? The bulk of our participation was limited to either watching on TV (or the Internet — the Spectacle adapts with technology) or writing papers after the fact lamenting the lack of anarchist participation. Clearly busing white anarchists in from the suburbs is probably not the best way to support such revolts (as long as anarchists remain outsiders, that is). However, the fact that anarchist participation was negligible speaks volumes. Of course, there are plenty of ways that white anarchists can tie up police and support such revolts without actually driving into non-white rebelling neighborhoods. How come white anarchists, who can be so creative when it comes to the letter-number road protests, (lock-downs, street theater, property destruction, Black Blocs, molotovs) are at a complete loss when this kind of thing happens? It isn’t timing, believe me. If we hope to change this we must examine and root out the source of our reluctance.”

[Ashen Ruins. Against the Corpse Machine: Defining A Post-Leftist Anarchist Critique of Violence. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2002. Page 5.]

“How will the industry of war be converted into an industry of peace? Will there be work for the fighting men? Will all the victims be looked after? Will the officer class resign itself to the loss of its sinecures? Can markets be won back again? …

“The present moment has nothing revolutionary about it. The counter-revolution feels quite bold enough to mount all sorts of provocations. The jails are crammed with workers. The rights of the proletariat are openly denied. We revolutionary workers are treated like underlings. The language of the bureaucrats, in uniform and out of uniform, is intolerable. Not to mention the attacks on the unions.

“A fresh revolution is the only course of action open. Let us set about its preparation. And at the height of a new stroke, we shall join the comrades who are today away fighting on the fronts, the comrades in the jails and the comrades who, even now, cherish the hope of a revolution that may bring justice to the working class; all in the streets together.

“To the success of a fresh revolution that will bring the workers of town and country complete satisfaction. To the attainment of an anarchist society that will satisfy man’s aspirations.”

[The Friends of Durruti Group. Towards a Fresh Revolution. Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 2002. Pages 26-27.]

“The Friends of Durruti Group was formed in early 1937. Its members and supporters were prominent comrades from the Gelsa battle-front. Remaining true to their anarchist beliefs, they refused to submit to the militarisation and, as a result, moved to the capital of Catalonia (Barcelona) where, along with other Barcelona comrades, they set up the group. They took as their symbol the figure of Buenaventura Durruti, an idealist who had devoted his whole life to his anarchist beliefs. He was a man of action as his heroic death on the Madrid front testifies… that heroic and timeless Madrid which lives on in the spontaneous catchphrase which the Republic’s government’s fight from their city drew from the capital’s inhabitants… Viva Madrid sin gobierno! (Long live Madrid without government!). This indomitable spirit of the people of Madrid lasted throughout the entire siege of the capital, and it was this spirit that the Group adopted as its own. Thus it was that the fighting men from Gelsa (with the Durruti Column on the Aragon front) became the heralds of the message ‘Stand fast and fight to the last!’ These were virtues that no one can deny that Durruti, the anarchist from Leon, did have. At his funeral Barcelona paid him the tribute of one of the largest popular demonstrations ever, as the Catalan proletariat took to the streets as a body to pay homage to the man who had given his life for the cause of the disinherited the world over.” [The Friends of Durruti Group. Towards a Fresh Revolution. Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 2002. Page 1.]

“Of the political thought of the past century, only anarchism or, better, anarcho-pacifism — the philosophy of institutions without the State and centrally organized violence — has consistently foreseen the big shapes and gross dangers of present advanced societies, their police, bureaucracy, excessive centralization of decision-making, social-engineering, and inevitable militarization. “War is the health of the State,” as Randolph Bourne put it. The bourgeois State may well have been merely the instrument of the dominant economic class, as Marx said, but in its further development its gigantic statism has become more important than its exploitation of labor; it and the socialist alternatives have not developed very differently; and all have tended toward fascism, statism pure and simple. In the corporate liberal societies, the Bismarckian welfare state, immensely extended, does less and less well by its poor and outcast. In socialist societies, free communism does not come to be, labor is regimented, and there is also a power elite. In both types, the alarming consequences of big-scale technology and massive urbanization, directed by the State or by baronial corporations in cooperation with the State, make it doubtful that central authority is a workable structure.” [Paul Goodman. New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative. Second edition. Oakland, California: PM Press. 2010. Page 145.]

“… public intellectual Paul Goodman’s The New Reformation (1970), also paints the early New Left as an anarchist renaissance, and sees in the Movement’s later years a growing conflict between anarchist decentralism and Leninist hierarchy.…

“Both Goodman and [Murray] Bookchin are typically anarchist, as they view this sort of bottom-up, grassroots organization as the only means by which a movement can sufficiently accommodate individual perspectives enough to remain truly representative of its members.”

[Michael O’Bryan, “In Defense of Vineland: Pynchon, Anarchism, and the New Left.” Twentieth Century Literature. Volume 62, number 1, March 2016. Pages 1-31.]

“… pacifism … may be seen as the ideology and movement that has resisted an institution closely related to the development of the nation-state: it challenges the right of the state to engage in, and conscript its citizens for, war.…

“… anarchism … is even more radical: it challenges not merely the nation state’s right to make war, but also its very right to exist. The central thrust of anarchism is directed against all the core elements that make up the nation state: its territoriality with the accompanying notion of frontiers; its sovereignty, implying exclusive jurisdiction over all people and property within those frontiers; its monopolistic control of the major means of physical force by which it upholds that sovereignty, both internally and externally; its system of positive law which overrides all other law and custom, and which implies that rights exist only if sanctioned by the state; and finally, the element that was added last — the idea of the nation as the paramount political community.”

[Geoffrey Ostergaard. Resisting the Nation State. The pacifist and anarchist tradition. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1982. Page 3.]

“Following World War II, there was notable cross-fertilization between U.S. anarchists and Black activists. The civil rights movement in the 1950s was influenced by anarcho-pacifism, which was based around a number of newspapers that were edited and written by former conscientious objectors. For example, Martin Luther King contributed articles to Liberation magazine, alongside anarchists David Wieck, Dave Dellinger, and Paul Goodman. And the famous Black activist Bayard Rustin was fired in 1951 by the Fellowship of Reconciliation due to his homosexuality but was soon after hired by the anarchist-led War Resisters’ League ….” [Dana M. Williams, “Black Panther Radical Factionalization and the Development of Black Anarchism.” Journal of Black Studies. Volume 46, number 7, October 2015. Pages 678-703.]

“[Paul] Goodman’s last years were a time of despair. The death of his son from a hiking accident devastated him. Radical students ignored him in the rush to revolution. The hurricane of the sixties had blown away much of his career as a literary artist. He wrote his best poetry at the end but essentially gave up on fiction. His health declined, and then his heart gave way. In a posthumously published essay Goodman summed up his ‘crazy hope’ for a world made ‘tolerable’ for human life. “Politically I want only that the children have bright eyes, the river be clean, food and sex be available, and nobody be pushed around.” [Casey Nelson Blake, “Paul Goodman: Anarchist and Patriot.” Raritan Quarterly. Volume xxxxii, 2012. Pages 20-33.]

“On arid Anarres, the communities had to scatter widely in search of resources, and few of them could be self-supporting, no matter how they cut back their notions of what is needed for support. They cut back very hard indeed, but to a minimum beneath which they would not go; they would not regress to pre-urban, pre-technological tribalism. They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. However vast the distances separating settlements, they held to the ideal of complex organicism. They built the roads first, the houses second. The special resources and products of each region were interchanged continually with those of others, in an intricate process of balance: that balance of diversity which is the characteristic of life, of natural and social ecology.” [Ursula K. Le Guin. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. New York: HarperCollins e-books imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. 2009. Ebook edition.]

“Though I had pretty well saturated my mind with utopian literature, with the literature of pacifist Anarchism, and with ‘temporal physics’ (insofar as it existed), before I wrote the book, my knowledge of relevant theoretical thinking was very weak. When I read recurrent citations in these essays—[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel above all, [Mikhail Mikhaylovich] Bakhtin, [Theodor] Adorno, [Herbert] Marcuse, and many more—I hunch up a bit again. I am embarrassed. My capacity for sustained abstract thought is somewhat above that of a spaniel. I knew and know these authors only by name and reputation; the book was not written under their influence, and they can’t be held responsible, positively or negatively, for anything in my text.” [Ursula K. Le Guin, “A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti.” The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman, editor. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books imprint of Romwan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2005. Pages 305-308.]

“In her attempt to embody anarchism, [Ursula K.] Le Guin constructs a highly traditional anarchist society on the planet Anarres. Drawing on the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century anarchist writers Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin, she imagines a society without the three great enemies of freedom: the state, organized religion, and private property. The most important functions usually performed by these institutions of course continue on Anarres. The Production and Distribution Coordination (PDC) runs the economy of the planet. Religion continues to exist—although not as an institution but as a mode, that is, as a way of viewing or experiencing the world. And people have food, clothing, and shelter as well as a modest number of personal possessions they pick up or create along the way. But no government, church, or ruling class coerces people into acting against their will. Social and political power is seen as inherendy repressive and so is reduced to a minimum. Anarres, then, is a traditional anarchy in these respects; however, Le Guin adds two other significant features to her embodiment.” [Daniel P. Jaeckle, “Embodied Anarchy in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.” Utopian Studies. Volume 20, number 1, 2009. Pages 75-95.]

“A social anarchist aesthetic is … concerned with the general ambiance or an attitude of wholeness and completeness that is expressed in the work of art. A work of art of any sort must be created and comprehended as a whole, and all aspects of the work need to be integrated. In the process of arranging the parts, there is always the need to understand and to express the whole, to see it emerge from the process itself and to result in a completion. Here is where postmodern art generally fails us. It refuses and even denies that there is a coherent context, a meaningful reality – even in the work of art itself.” [Neala Schleuning. Artpolitik: Social Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation. Creative Commons. Brooklyn, New York: Minor Compositions imprint of Autonomedia. 2013. Page 251.]

“National liberation struggles don’t end when the imperialists decide that economic control and the threat of military intervention are more effective means of domination than army bases and colonial governments on native soil. They continue through early independence when the imperialist powers are busy stabilizing their puppet regimes, and corporate markets. It continues through the imposition of neo-liberal economic pressures and dictates from organizations like the IMF [International Monetary Fund], World Bank, and the World Trade Organization along with a host of regional outfits and private organized interests. And if and when those mechanisms aren’t enough, the Security Council or the U.S. military will step in. International solidarity is not about committing to a process. It’s about committing to a people and their struggle for liberation. This commitment means viewing solidarity not as a reward for doctrinal compliance among the colonized but as a discourse betweens peoples and across cultures about how we all can live, not in some imposed western ideal of freedom and equality but in a self- determined freedom where different people decide for themselves how they will arrange their affairs. This doesn’t mean that anarchists always must agree and when we don’t we should support voices in those societies who are committed to the visions most like our own.” [Roger White. Post Colonial Anarchism: Essays on race, repression and culture in communities of color 1999-2004. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. Undated. Page 8.]

“What would a truly anarchist epistemology look like? I suspect that an anarchist epistemology would be an epistemology of desire. By this, I do not mean that we should seek to completely instrumentalize knowledge; desire always springs from an idea of what is, and I have no use for an epistemological stance that says, ‘what I want to be true, is therefore true.’ I simply mean that, as anarchists, we know what we want; this does not, cannot, depend on scientific fads and societal whims. While it is certainly possible that our desires themselves are socially constructed, to invalidate them because of this possibility would eviscerate the anarchist critique to the point of irrelevance. Therefore, I submit that there are basic, bedrock truths without which anarchism would be unrecognizable. These are not necessarily truths about the world, but they are truths about anarchism.” [Pendleton Vandiver. Anarchist Epistemology. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2001. Page 4.]

“… we are not afraid to forego judges and their sentences. We forego sanctions of all kinds, even obligations to morality. We are not afraid to say: ‘Do what you will; act as you will’; because we are persuaded that the great majority of mankind, in proportion to their degree of enlightenment and the completeness with which they free themselves from existing fetters will behave and act always in a direction useful to society just as we are persuaded beforehand that a child will one day walk on its two feet and not on all fours simply because it is born of parents belonging to the genus Homo.” [Peter Kropotkin. Anarchist Morality. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1897. Page 15.]

“Sceneism is the name that we are using to describe the prevailing state of the ‘anarchist movement’ today (at least, in North America). What we mean is that our movement now shares several fundamental characteristics with the petty social relations found inside music ‘scenes’; punk, indie, hardcore, etc. (of course music scenes are not the only ones that exist, but for comparative purposes they’re a good place to start).

“Specifically, the hostile trends that we have witnessed within the anarchist movement have been elitism, white & male dominance, too close a relationship with a specific subculture (IE punk), and cliques of friends who by their very existence close off new membership in the movement by making it inaccessible to those not already deeply involved.

“This is not to say that we are addressing sceneism as the only problem in today’s movement, but a specific one that so far very few organizations, especially informal affinity groups, have managed to combat effectively. Furthermore, sceneism must be confronted as yet another system of domination: a bourgeois-spectacular social relation operating within the anti-authoritarian movement; one that we must dismantle.”

[Nachie. Anarcho-Sceneism: What it is and how to fight it. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2004. Page 3.]

“Freedom of movement is not a right; it is a real living force. Despite all the obstacles that states put in people’s way — all the barriers of barbed wire, money, laws, ID cards, surveillance and so on — millions cross borders every day. For every migrant stopped or deported, many more get through and stay, whether legally or clandestinely. Don’t overestimate the strength of the state and its borders. Don’t underestimate the strength of everyday resistance.…

“… The most successful and inspiring No Borders work has been just about this: creating strong networks to support free movement across Europe’s borders. This is the infrastructure of a growing movement of resistance: contacts, information, resources, meeting points, public drop-ins, safe houses, and so on. A pool of formal and informal connections, a web of solidarity, working on both public and clandestine levels.

“People manage to move, live, and evade state control because they are part of communities and networks. Migration happens because of millions of connections between millions of people. Our No Borders networks are one small part of this. Yet, as a movement, we can play an active role in bringing such connections together across national and cultural boundaries. Our struggle is one and the same.”

[Anonymous. A No Borders manifesto. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 1.]

“Objectivism holds that the essence of a concept is that fundamental characteristic(s) of its units on which the greatest number of other characteristics depend, and which distinguishes these units from all other existents within the field of man’s knowledge. Thus the essence of a concept is determined contextually and may be altered with the growth of man’s knowledge. The metaphysical referent of man’s concepts is not a special, separate metaphysical essence, but the total of the facts of reality he has observed, and this total determines which characteristics of a given group of existents he designates as essential. An essential characteristic is factual, in the sense that it does exist, does determine other characteristics and does distinguish a group of existents from all others; it is epistemological in the sense that the classification of ‘essential characteristic’ is a device of man’s method of cognition—a means of classifying, condensing and integrating an ever-growing body of knowledge.” [Ayn Rand with Leonard Peikoff. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff, editors. Expanded second edition. New York: A Meridian Book imprint of Penguin Group. 1990. Page 52.]

“The Objectivist ethics holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action and that man must act for his own rational self-interest. But his right to do so is derived from his nature as man and from the function of moral values in human life—and, therefore, is applicable only in the context of a rational, objectively demonstrated and validated code of moral principles which define and determine his actual self-interest. It is not a license ‘to do as he pleases’ and it is not applicable to the altruists’ image of a ‘selfish’ brute nor to any man motivated by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, wishes or whims.” [Ayn Rand. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: A Signet Book imprint of Penguin Group. 1964. Page 8.]

“… [Here] was the stamp James Taggart had dreaded, from which there was no escape: the stamp and proof of objectivity. ‘No …’ he said feebly …, but it was no longer the voice of a living consciousness.” [Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged. New York: A Signet Book imprint of Penguin Group. 2005. Ebook edition.]

“The Council of American Artists had, as chairman, a cadaverous youth who painted what he saw in his nightly dreams. There was a boy who used no canvas, but did something with bird cages and metronomes, and another who discovered a new technique of painting: he blackened a sheet of paper and then painted with a rubber eraser. There was a stout middle-aged lady who drew subconsciously, claiming that she never looked at her hand and had no idea of what the hand was doing; her hand, she said, was guided by the spirit of the departed lover whom she had never met on earth. Here they did not talk so much about the proletariat, but merely rebelled against the tyranny of reality and of the objective.” [Ayn Rand. The Fountainhead. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1971. Ebook edition.]

“Comrades! The doors of science are open to us, sons of toil! Science is now in our own calloused hands. We have outgrown that old bourgeois prejudice about the objective impartiality of science. Science is not impartial. Science is a weapon of the class struggle. We’re not here to further our petty personal ambitions. We have outgrown the slobbering egoism of the bourgeois who whined for a personal career. Our sole aim and purpose in entering the Red Technological Institute is to train ourselves into efficient fighters in the vanguard of Proletarian Culture and Construction!” [Ayn Rand. We the Living. New York: New American Library imprint of Penguin Group. 2009. Page 53.]

“… we must never speak of the times before the Great Rebirth, else we are sentenced to three years in the Palace of Corrective Detention. It is only the Old Ones who whisper about it in the evenings, in the Home of the Useless. They whisper many strange things, of the towers which rose to the sky, in those Unmentionable Times, and of the wagons which moved without horses, and of the lights which burned without flame. But those times were evil. And those times passed away, when men saw the Great Truth which is this: that all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all men together.” [Ayn Rand. Anthem. Jersey City, New Jersey: Start Publishing LLC. 2013. Pages 5-6.]

“… she [Ayn Rand] should turn out to be a ‘nominalist’ (and/or ‘conceptualist’) with regard to abstract universals and possibly a ‘realist’ with regard to specific universals.… As far as the problem of universals is concerned, Objectivism will be, not a mysterious tertium quid [unidentified third thing] that overcomes a false dichotomy between ‘intrinsicism’ and ‘subjectivism,’ but a simple, straightforward, and not at all original combination of the only two logically possible solutions to the problem.” [Scott Ryan. Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality: A Critique of Ayn Rand’s Epistemology. New York: Writers Club Press imprint of iUniverse, Inc. 2003. Pages 45-46.]

“… fiction is not philosophy. [Ayn] Rand’s melodrama and rhetoric do not transfer well to the quest for systematic understanding. And Rand’s particular brand of ‘hero worship’, however useful in her dramatic and somewhat propagandistic novels, is unlikely to appeal in real life to those hero-worshippers—like me—whose objects of admiration possess such virtues as judiciousness, thoroughness, self-criticism, intellectual humility, and equanimity.” [Scott Ryan. Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality: A Critique of Ayn Rand’s Epistemology. New York: Writers Club Press imprint of iUniverse, Inc. 2003. Page 381.]

“The important thing about this philosophy [Objectivism], and the small town setting in which I discovered it, was that daily life held few reminders of what I would later consider the heartlessness and arrogance of Ayn Rand. If you were ever to believe that each man started with an equal chance in life, you would believe it in a town like Redlands, California. The encrustations of social class, educational background, and family name which weighed so heavily in the East seemed largely to be shed when one moved to California, the land without a past. Everyone had an equal chance at the brass ring.” [James Fallows, “Liberals and Ayn Rand.” The Atlantic Online. 1975. Retrieved on June 28th, 2016.]

“If by clever you mean she was able to dupe racists into thinking their racism isn’t racism. Ayn Rand was a racist in the same way Glenn Beck is a racist.

“She knew she couldn’t argue against the fundamental evil that is racism, so she attempted to cloak white supremacy in an economic philosophy and people like her have found it useful to do the same thing ever since.

“She was the Glenn Beck/Karl Rove/Lee Atwater of her time, trying to use language to justify a white supremacist ideology. Her ideas are still popular with many, including her namesake Rand Paul.”

[Bill Kramer, “Ayn Rand was a clever racist.” Daily Kos. April 24th, 2011. Retrieved on June 28th, 2016.]

“… one cannot argue with dialectical consistency that argumentatively unjustifiable ways of dealing with other persons justifiably prevail outside the context of argumentation—those others might be one’s opponents in a future argumentation. Therefore there can be no justification for having recourse to such ways of dealing with such others. In short: persons ought to respect their likes as free and independent persons.

“Whether or not this is the principle of libertarianism or libertarian capitalism, it is in any case the rationally demonstrable foundation of the classical natural law ethic, the normative framework—the law of reason— within which natural persons (human beings, in so far as they are capable of reason) ought to solve their differences, disagreements and conflicts. Within this framework, a jurisprudence of freedom can propose and critically consider ways in which people ought to, or may, interact in various sorts of situations without violating the normative requirements implied in their nature as beings capable of reason.”

[Frank Van Dun, “Argumentation Ethics and The Philosophy of Freedom.” Libertarian Papers. Volume 1, article 19, 2009. Pages 1-32.]

“The ethic of rational egoism is based, thus, on the epistemological premise that the objective, cognitive, conceptual reasoning capacities of conscious organisms are necessary, and sufficient to derive derive objective value choices. This places ultimate authority, and responsibility, for making choices, and for every other category of action, in the individual. Consciousness, and the capacity for rapid adaptation to a dynamically changing environment, is not alien to the phenomenal universe, but a natural outgrowth of its principles of organization. Thus, ethics, the science of making value choices, is neither a contradition between human nature and the nature of reality nor is it necessarily arbitrary. It is instead fundamental to the conduct of a successful existence and ultimately to the fulfillment of a purposeful identity.…

“… The anarcho-capitalist purist, which is the position of the author, does not brook the imposition of even government monopoly of defensive force, as that is an infringement on the equal liberty of every individual to compete in the provision of these services on the free and open market.…

“The concept of individual rights and its derivation from the ethic of rational egoism is developed by Ayn Rand ….”

[Richard Sloman, “Liberty Defined: An Objectivist Anarchist Manifesto.” Philosophical Notes. Number 28, 1993. Pages 1-7.]

“In anarchist as well as libertarian thought, authority resides in the self-directed individual, whether that individual is conceived in atomistic or relational terms. While one can argue that this is also the case in process thought, it would be more accurate to say that authority resides in the individual-in-community. Authority does not reside in an atomistic individual disconnected from and unconcerned with the community. In similar fashion, neither does it reside in the community alone, with the possibility of swallowing up the individual constantly present. Rather, authority resides in interdependent and interrelated individuals-in-community, with an equal emphasis on the individual and the community.” [Leslie A. Muray, “Libertarian Socialism, Anarchism, and Process Thought.” Encounter. Volume 69, number 4, fall 2008. Pages 47-63.]

“This article argues that queering anarchism means complexifying it. Concretely, we propose that we can apply some of the ways that we (might) love to the ways that we think about political theory. Thus, we build the metaphor of ‘theoretical polyamory’ to suggest that having multiple partners (or political theories) is a way of constructing more holistic and nuanced movements than might be implied by solely relying on anarchism for the answers to the complex questions surrounding the political project of undoing all forms of structured and institutionalized domination, coercion, and control.…

“Theoretical polyamory … is the belief that we can have multiple partners when it comes to political theory. One theory could not possibly adequately describe the complexity of our relations of ruling. One theory could never hope to prescribe the ‘proper’ mode of resistance. Moreover, it is problematic to suggest that such a ‘proper mode’ could even exist given the ways that hierarchies emerge sometimes in very random ways. Those things said, there are benefits to having polyamorous relationships that illustrate quite well what this might mean for theory.”

[Deric Shannon and Abbey Willis, “Theoretical polyamory: Some thoughts on loving, thinking, and queering anarchism.” Sexualities. Volume 13, number 4, August 2010. Pages 433-443.]

“The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities of workplace democracy in contemporary organisations. While organisational democracy is a popular theme in contemporary management literature, it is often asserted that participatory democracy is impractical and thus representative forms of governance constitute a more appealing and ‘realistic’ option. Such views not only fail to picture workplace democracy beyond procedural principles (e.g. periodical elections), but they also block one of its promising features: its openness to change. In this context, direct democracy that is guided by horizontality and prefiguration may offer more promising grounds in the search for workplace democracy.…

“… Unlike the idea that representation is the most viable alternative to authoritative forms of governance in large organisations, the case of libertarian communism in Spain in the 1930s … show[s] that organisations can increase their size and yet maintain or even strengthen the active participation of their members in the decision-making process.”

[George Kokkinidis, “In search of workplace democracy.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. Volume 32, number 3/4, 2012 Pages 233-256.]

“In bringing forward insights that aim to make us more effective in reaching our goals as revolutionaries, here we lay the basis of our position paper. ‘Combative Unionism’ illustrates a specific strategy that should be applied within the labour movement.…

“… we now see business unions engaging in more grass-roots strategies, such as the OurWalmart campaign, Fight for a Fair Economy, and the Fast Food Forward campaign. However, what must be noted is that these struggles are still bureaucratically controlled and directed. Therefore, moving forward with the realities this presents, Prairie Struggle Organization recognizes that we as revolutionaries need to take back these struggles from bureaucratic control rather than slip further into the collective coma that bureaucratic unionism has put us in. While it is wished that combative unionism would take hold in these unions, the current potential for this is slim. However, through radical organizing and engagement under the principles of combative unionism, we hold that confrontation and challenge to these bureaucratic orders from the ‘shop floor’ is a much needed step towards reinvigorating the base of these unions, the members. It is this process that will proliferate combative unionist ideas under the context of business unionism, and escalate antagonisms with the bureaucratic class to both expose and challenge their authority.”

[Prairie Struggle. Combative Unionism: Waging Class War Within Labour. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2013. Pages 3 and 7-8.]

“Take a plant in modern industry. The workers, under the old form of unionism, are parcelled out to a score or more of unions. Craft division incites craft jealousy, and so they are more or less in conflict with each other, and the employer constructively takes advantage of this fact, and that is why he favors pure and simple unionism.…

“We do not intend that certain departments shall so attach themselves to the capitalist employers. We purpose that the workers shall all be organised, and if there IS any agreement it will embrace them all; and if there is any violation of the agreement, in the case of a single employee it at once becomes the concern of all. That is unionism, industrial unionism, in which all of the workers, totally regardless of occupation, are united completely within the one organisation, so that at all times they can act together in the interests of all. It is upon this basis that the Industrial Workers of the World is organised. It is in this spirit and with this object in view that it makes its appeal to the working class. Then, again, the revolutionary economic organisation has a new and important function which has never once been thought of in the old union, for the simple reason that the old union intends that the wage system shall endure forever.…

“We need you, and you need us. We have got to have the workers united, and you have got to help us in the work. And so we make our appeal to you tonight, and we know that you will not fail. You can arrive at no other conclusion; you are bound to join the Industrial Workers, and become a missionary in the field of industrial unionism. You will then feel the ecstasy of a new-born aspiration. You will do your very best. You will wear the badge of the Industrial Workers, and you wear it with pride and joy.”

[Eugene V. Debs. Industrial Unionism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Pages 6 and 12.]

“Progressives and libertarians generally part ways on the justifiability of legislation that boosts the bargaining power of unions. Progressives generally think, not implausibly, that government has already put a thumb on the scale in favour of employers through the legal definition of the character and powers of the corporation, such that it is manifestly unjust for government to fail to put an equalising thumb on the scale in favour of unions. For now I only want to say that I think there is indeed a plausible case for government stepping in to help strengthen workers’ bargaining power when inequalities in such power (often created by law and legislation) lead to a systemically unfair division of the gains from productive cooperation. I don’t think the same plausible case applies to public-sector unions for reasons I’ve recited ad nauseam.” [W.W., “Libertarian unionism: The power of free association.” The Economist. Online edition. February 2erd, 2011.]

“We couldn’t start to explain what Soma is and how it works without first mentioning the importance of its name for our work. The word ‘Soma’ comes from Greek, and means ‘body’ but not just as we are used to thinking of the body. For us, the word incorporates the body’s extensions, such as its desires and ideals, thoughts and attitudes, ideology and love, profession and social life. A human ‘Soma’ is everything that a person is, including how and with whom she or he has relationships with. For us, Soma means the totality of being in the widest and most complete sense.

“We understand Somatology to be the study of phenomena that involve the soma in its interaction with other somas and with the environment. Somatherapy is the practical expression of somatology. It’s where understanding can be found that aids the consciousness of a soma in its personal and social life.”

[Roberto Freire and João da Mata. Soma: An Anarchist Therapy Vol. III: Body to Body – A synthesis of Somatherapy. Ceri Buckmaster, translator. Privately published. 1997. Page 3.]

“Plato was not alone in thinking that, of all human activities, play can best display that which is most truthful in people. Play seems to represent human essence, evoking the child or the animal in a person, since play precedes culture and civilization, language and rationality. Some have argued that humans distinguish themselves precisely by the manner and frequency by which they play. In Homo Ludens, Dutch historian Johan Huizinga argues that our impressive ingenuity and creativity is due to play, which he defines as anything done for purposes other than sheer necessity. Play is never imposed by physical necessity or moral duty. It is never a task. It is done at leisure, during ‘free time’. Only when play is a recognized cultural function – a rite, a ceremony – is it bound up with notions of obligation and duty. Here, then, we have the main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom.

“This idea was also apparent to Roberto Freire, an anarchist doctor and psychoanalyst from Brazil, who, after a lifetime spent in struggle against oppressive powers, took the play postulate to heart, and created a therapeutic practice built upon it. Calling the practice Soma, Freire fashioned his therapy to differ greatly from other forms of psychotherapy. Instead of relying solely on months, or even years, of conversation to understand and treat his patients, Freire realized that understanding could be achieved more effectively through group participation in physically and emotionally challenging activities, what he called ‘exercises.’ Soma, therefore, was created as a combination of play, response, reflection, experimentation, and challenge – everything taking place within a cohesive group setting in order to facilitate honest, independent character growth. All of this, coupled with the regular practice of capoeira angola, is integrated into Roberto Freire’s practice.

“To understand Soma, it is essential to understand Roberto Freire’s story. Born in 1927 in São Paulo, he lived through and fought against two dictatorships, and felt the pervasive effects of oppression on his own body and throughout his life. Having come of age in a radical time and place, Freire became sympathetic to anarchism from an early age. Freire was many things in his life: doctor, psychoanalyst, anarchist militant, theater producer, novelist, magazine editor, reporter, and much more.”

[G. Ogo and Drica Dejerk. Soma: an anarchist play therapy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2008. Page 1.]

“A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy. Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive rerouting of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.” [Timothy C. May, “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto.” Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. Peter Ludlow, editor. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 2001. Pages 61-63.]

“A few years ago, the phrase crypto anarchy was coined to suggest the impending arrival of a Brave New World in which governments, as we know them, have crumbled, disappeared, and been replaced by virtual communities of individuals doing as they wish without interference. Proponents argue that crypto anarchy is the inevitable—and highly desirable—outcome of the release of public key cryptography into the world. With this technology, they say, it will be impossible for governments to control information, compile dossiers, conduct wiretaps, regulate economic arrangements, and even collect taxes. Individuals will be liberated from coercion by their physical neighbors and by governments. This view has been argued recently by Tim May.” [Dorothy E. Denning, “The Future of Cryptography.” Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. Peter Ludlow, editor. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 2001. Pages 85-101.]

“… crypto-anarchists have turned the tables on a technoculture that seeks to render society fully visible. These are techno-anarchists who put their faith in cryptography as a political tool. Most famously enshrined in Timothy May’s ‘Crypto Anarchist Manifesto’ (2001), this type of activism consists of constructing codes and ciphers to shroud messages in secrecy. Programs such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) create untraceable interactions (communication, financial transactions), and can thus ensure un-monitorable activities.

“Their practice is based on an atypical interpretation of the First Amendment. For cryptoanarchists, free speech is not the right to be heard, but the right to speak in a language that is occulted. While the cryptoanarchists tend towards the libertarian and technophilic stream, their use of technology creates strategic potential for secrecy under surveillance state operations. At the very least, cryptoanarchism finds in technological developments not the instruments of domination through surveillance and data mining, but tools-becoming-weapons against that scopic regime.”

[Jack Bratich, “Popular Secrecy and Occultural Studies.” Cultural Studies. Volume 21, number 1, January 2007. Pages 42-58.]

“A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto-anarchy.

“Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive rerouting of encrypted packets and tamperproof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.”

[Anonymous. The Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. No pagination.]

“Marxism is an ideological framework.…

“For the logic of structural-anarchism—species-being is not some ephemeral empty concept, but is specifically the insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge within all entities. The notion of the insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge surpasses [Karl] Marx’s species-being analysis in the sense that it specifies a specific definition of what species-being consists of, comprises of and the set of working relationships it embodies in a most accurate and precise fashion. The insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge is species-being, i.e. the mechanism within all existential entities which manufactures value, i.e. all sorts of forms of capital that are seized from it by the logic of capitalism. For example, the species-being, i.e. the insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge, of a snake is a specific type of entity that interprets, perceives, acts and is in the world according to a very distinct and unique insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge. The snake manufactures a specific type of capital specific to the characteristics of its specles-being, i.e. its specific insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge. Its specific insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge always attempting to understand, conquer and own greater and greater portions of its specific environment so as to manufacture greater portions of its specific surplus value so it can increase its influence in the world and propagate itself and its species-being in general. The same applies to the human species, which embodies a specific insatiable drive for ownership/knowledge, which enables it to accumulate and extract its own specific forms of surplus values that permit the human species to expand and intensify its dominion over the globe. As a result, the logic of structural-anarchism refines the Marxist concept of species-being by giving it a more specific definition and procedural definition and by expanding the concept beyond strictly the human species to include all species.”

[Michel Luc Bellemare. The Structural-Anarchism Manifesto: The Logic of Structural-Anarchism Versus The Logic of Capitalism. Montreal, Quebec: Blacksatin Publications. 2016. Pages 61-62.]

“I am one of many class struggle anarchists with mental illness. I am a member of an anarchist political organization and have been for the past five years. In recent months, we have begun discussing developing a ‘code of conduct’ around member behaviour. Because my particular mental illness involves some pretty disruptive and inappropriate behaviour at times, I would like to explore some ideas on how organizations can accommodate people like me, while also maintaining the functioning of the organization. In my experience, this is generally not done well. So, for this piece, I would first like to lay out some of the pitfalls I have noticed organizations have come up against in addressing this. I would then like to make a proposal for ‘collective accommodation’ and explain why it might offer a better structure for support.…

“… [One can] ‘accommodate’ members who have disruptive behaviour by allowing them to remain in the group. Often, this accommodation looks like tolerating someone without truly including them (politically and/or in the social life of the group) or listening to their ideas. At times, it takes a very negative direction, when individuals who act in aggressive, demeaning ways toward others are allowed to continue to so, simply because these behaviours are attributed to a mental health issue. In the worst cases, I have seen individuals attempt to excuse oppressive (sexist, racist, etc) behaviour as a mental health issue, and get a pass?while alienating and oppressing others in the group.…

“I propose that, as anarchists, we can do better. Although it can be difficult at times, I think that ‘letting the politics lead’ with regards to what initially appear like personal topics—such as mental health—can be useful. In this case, I would draw on mutual aid and collective responsibility to propose a form of ‘collective accommodation.’ The model I propose would balance personal and collective responsibility to support members who struggle with self-regulation to meet standards that are realistic for them. It would also take into account that the organization itself and other members may act as stressors, and that a person’s behaviour is not all on them. Finally, I believe it offers an ultimately positive view of people who struggle with mental illness, as it is both compassionate to their struggles and respectful of their strengths.”

[Anonymous. Class Struggle and Mental Health: Live to Fight Another Day. Edmonton, Alberta: Edmonton Small Press Association. 2014. Pages 55-57.]

“In Aotearoa [MP3 audio file, i.e., New Zealand] as around the world, we face many obstacles to the growth of a mass, anarchist communist movement. The forces of capitalism and the state aside, we are up against a society used to the delegation of power to someone else. Politicians, union and community bureacrats, and lobbying are the main channels of current dissent in Aotearoa. Likewise, our highly individualised society — with its loss of community and the increase of isolation, consumption, and apathy — has overshadowed the ideas of direct action, collective decision making, solidarity, and self-organisation. In the workplace we face individual contracts, casualised labour, and a lack of class conciousness; where unions do exist, they are hopelessly reformist and entirely entrenched in the current capitalist structure.

“The position of Beyond Resistance is that in order to challenge these current conditions, it is necessary to struggle. But if we are a fighting organisation, then strategy and tactics must be applied. We need to know well our long term objectives and how to overcome these obstacles — the end being to weaken our class enemy, strengthen organs of self-management and dual power, and take concrete tactical steps which bring us closer to a position of breaking with the current system.

“Propaganda is necessary to build a visible and vibrant working class movement. But it cannot be the exclusive focus of our efforts — propaganda cannot determine the needs of an organisation; it is the needs of the organisation that have to determine the propaganda.

“With this in mind, we must be able to offer constructive and practical action based on our ideas, our methods and our goals. We must work towards a constructive anarchism. Therefore, Beyond Resistance seeks to implement the strategy put forward below.…

“The focus of our work will be the building of dual power. Dual power is the idea that the embryo of the new world must be created while fighting the current one; ‘building the new in the shell of the old’. It means encouraging working class organs of self-management, where we can exercise our autonomy and restrict the power of boss and government until such time as we can confront and abolish both. A dual power strategy is one that directly challenges institutions of power and at the same time, in some way, prefigures the new institutions we envision. Therefore, it not only opposes the state, it also prepares for the difficult confrontations and questions that will arise in a revolutionary situation.

“Social reforms won by progressive movements may be important, but if they do not work towards dual power they should not be the focus of Beyond Resistance. Thus, campaigns developed by the collective that do not contribute toward the building of dual power should be seriously analysed and evaluated. If a popular protest movement has little hope of building dual power, it is not one we should be collectively involved in. We may morally and politically approve of such movements but as a small group with limited resources, we must reject the liberalism of reform activism and concern ourselves with our revolutionary strategy.…

“With this in mind, Beyond Resistance aims to have a radical feminist perspective, in several ways. Firstly, we need a radical feminist analysis of our society that challenges male dominance, compulsory heterosexuality, and the bipolar gender system. Secondly, our internal operations (organizing structure, roles and responsibilities, meeting procedures, decision making, etc.) must ensure women’s participation and be strongly aware of practices that tend to favor men’s voices over women’s, and we must work to overcome them. Thirdly, we must not neglect radical feminist political struggle, particularly those kinds which connect struggles against sexism with the class struggle and building dual power. Finally, our future vision must be feminist. It should imagine a world not only without sexism or homophobia but one in which gender relations are completely transformed and liberated. Toward this end, we recognise resistance to masculine/feminine gender borders and encourage people to critique and explore their desires rather than repress them.

“Anarchist strategy and activity in Aotearoa must recognise Maori oppression, Tino Rangatiratanga [sovereign independence], and Indigenous forms of self-organisation. We recognise and support the need for Maori to struggle as Maori, with Maori, and on Maori terms — it is not up to Pakeha to tell Maori what is best for them, for this is the continuation of white supremacy. Instead, we can illustrate the link between class exploitation and colonial oppression, vocalise an anarchist communist perspective, and offer a critique of Maori corporatism, hand-in-hand with local iwi [people or nation].”

[Beyond Resistance. Towards a constructive anarchism: The strategy of beyond resistance. Christchurch, New Zealand: Beyond Resistance. 2009. Pages 1-3.]

“… [There] has been a conversation between the interviews I conducted with activists, the organisational dynamics this research highlighted, activist and academic literature on anarchist and radical left organisation and, finally, the practical experiences and theoretical insights of cybernetics. The culmination of this conversation has come in the form of anarchist cybernetics, an approach to understanding organisation and the role of communication therein that draws on the fundamental concepts of cybernetics: viable systems; autonomy; self-organisation; and functional hierarchy. At the same time, it also takes these ideas beyond cybernetics, or at least beyond where cybernetics has taken them to up until now.

“In many ways, this has brought me back to where I was when I started in 2011: genuinely excited about the prospect of developing a cybernetics-inspired understanding of radical left and anarchist organisation. While the outcomes of the 2011 uprisings have been less positive than many expected at the time (although the story is by no means over and the rise of parties like Syriza and Podemos, for all their contradictions, might suggest the next chapter in the reawakening of the radical left), they have offered important lessons about the potentials and the limits of participatory and democratic organisation and the use of social media within a radical political project. Anarchist cybernetics is suggested, therefore, as a way of articulating these potentials and limits. This thesis tries to do this through philosophical and theoretical reflection that is bound up with empirical research that brings the experiences of activists into these discussions. Beyond introducing anarchist cybernetics as a potential heuristic tool that might help elaborate on some of the dynamics of radical left and anarchist organisation, this thesis introduces two main research questions as its focus. Firstly, how can control, as self-organisation, be understood in line with anarchist concerns for autonomy and democracy? Secondly, what conceptualisation of communication is appropriate in relation to anarchist accounts of self-organisation? These draw, of course, on Norbert Wiener?s characterisation of cybernetics as the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine, and focusing on these two sides of cybernetics can help show how anarchist cybernetics might be put to use not only by scholars but also by activists.”

[Thomas Swann. Anarchist Cybernetics: Control and Communication in Radical Left Social Movements. Ph.D. thesis (U.S. English, dissertation). University of Leicester. Leicester, England. September, 2015. Pages 4-5.]

“It is indicative of the success of this transfer of the term self-organisation from the science of cybernetics to the anarchist lexicon that the awareness of the origins of the term is nearly absent in the contemporary radical discourse that employs it. Rather than a suggestive model or metaphor, self-organisation functions in many cases as a self-evident and self-sufficient axiomatic unit, a basic term of the normative ontology of radical political action.…

“The historical project that traces the plural genealogies of self-organisation as it criss-crosses the scientific and political domains is thus useful as a way to de-familiarise and de-sediment a concept we may take entirely too much for granted. Focusing, as I do here, on the role of cybernetics is particularly salient, given the ways in which the re-elaboration of self-organisation in radical politics starting in the 1990s tended to run in parallel with a new enthusiasm for exactly the kinds of technology cybernetics would give rise to; recall that the boom-time of resistance stretching from the Zapatista uprising to Seattle and subsequent mobilisations coincided more or less exactly with the real deployment of the Internet.”

[John Duda, “Cybernetics, anarchism and self-organisation.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 21, number 1, spring–summer 2013. Pages 52-72.]

“… hermeneutics has always been the latent backbone of cultural revolutions against bearers of power, that is, the most productive movements against imposed truth. Although these movements are also always accused of being oppressive in that they try to impose their own agendas, it should be noted that there is an anarchic vein in hermeneutics that, as Reiner Schürmann explained, does not involve the absence of rules but of the unique universal rule. As the resistance to principles, conventions, and categories, anarchy is not the end of the political project of hermeneutics but its beginning.” [Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala. Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx. New York: Columbia University Press. 2011. Page 78.]

“… communism must function as a ‘specter,’ that is, not as a political program that proposes more ‘rational’ ways for unfettered development (which were part of the agenda of scientific socialism) but rather as a movement that embraces the programmatic cause of ‘degrowth’ as the only way to save the human species. In this way, the function of the specter—which disturbs and shocks the serene routine of those who, as in the case of Hamlet, must reap the fruit of violence—is useful for shocking into awareness those who prefer not to recognize capitalism’s consequences. Leaving aside any metaphors, we believe that hermeneutic communism today, that is, a programmatically ‘weak’ communism, can hope for a different future only if it has the courage to act as a specter by refusing to follow capitalism’s emphasis on rational development. And if hermeneutic communism does not imply immediate violent revolutions, this is both because armed capitalism is impossible to defeat and because a violent acquisition of power would be socially counterproductive. After all, as the new South American governments have demonstrated, communist access to power may still take place within the framework of the formal rules of democracy.” [Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala. Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx. New York: Columbia University Press. 2011. Page 121.]

“I have always recognised a certain lack of historical culture as one of my own limitations. I only read things that, right from the first page, already convince to explore the material in greater depth, and thus the works that I can claim to ‘read’ are relatively rare. And if we add to this, the fact that as theorists we tend to have renounced the necessity of learning history in detail, that I had been a ‘working’ student for such a long time, well … All these factors largely explain, firstly, why I never did write that history of madness, and, secondly, why I embraced the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics.… It is true that I have always been more interested in the secondary literature than in the primary authors themselves, but this is a kind of limitation which I believe I can defend theoretically insofar as the only real access we can have to authors of the past is by means of their ‘effective history,’ that is, by means of the successive interpretations of those who came after them.” [Gianni Vattimo, “Gianni Vattimo: Philosophy as Ontology of Actuality.” Luca Savarino and Federico Vercellone, interviewers. Iris. Volume I, number 2, October 2009. Pages 311-350.]

“Hermeneutic communism is about the politics of emergencies that (a) disruptively take place in the neoliberal status quo of ‘the lack of emergency,’ and (b) occur at the time when only the ‘remains of being’ are left. This statement is in need of a step-by-step clarification. The emergencies which hermeneutic communism addresses belong to the register of disruptions that enable the ‘event of unconcealment.’ In insisting that politics should be post-metaphysically founded on ‘interpretation, history, and event,’ [Gianni] Vattimo champions the view that neither can communism be translated into a particular philosophical position, nor can hermeneutics be regarded as supporting a certain political program. Yet both, communism and hermeneutics, bring to the fore ‘the lack of emergency’ in the present ‘framed democracies.’…

“… Vattimo raises the impressive claim that the weak communists ‘need an undisciplined social practice which shares with anarchism the refusal to formulate a system, a constitution, a positive realistic model according to traditional political methods.’ The communist idea cannot be purified from utopian imagery. Yet, as already discussed, this imagery is to be freed from any metaphysics of presence.”

[Dimitri Ginev, “Hermeneutic Communism and/or Hermeneutic Anarchism.” Philosophy Today. Volume 60, issue 3, summer 2016. Pages 663-685.]

“Riding the wave of nearly twenty years of global activism, anarchism has established a niche hold in a diverse range of research fields. It would be a wild exaggeration to say that anarchism research has entered the mainstream, but hardly an embellishment to argue that the possibilities of the anarchist turn have been recognised by significant groups of scholars.” [Ruth Kinna, “Anarchism and critical management studies: a reflection from an anarchist studies perspective.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, 2014. Pages 611-621.]

“By 1996, the anarchist community had begun to view AS [the journal, Anarchist Studies] as a major site of intellectual discussion and (in the best sense of the word) argument.…

“AS has published papers on a remarkably diverse array of topics over the past fifteen years. Still, certain general trends have emerged. For example, AS has always recognized the vital role which postmodernism and post-structuralism play in contemporary debates about anarchist theory. By no means has AS provided an uncritical endorsement of the various ‘post-’ theories. Instead, the journal has consistently offered a stimulating conversation about the relevance (or irrelevance) of these theories to contemporary anarchism.”

[Lewis Call, “A brief history of Anarchist Studies (so far).” Anarchist Studies. Volume 15, number 2, autumn–winter 2007. Pages 100-106.]

“If … woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the wife of a ‘good’ man, his goodness con sisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature’s demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a ‘good’ man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which differ entiates it from love.” [Emma Goldman. Marriage and Love. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association. 1911. Page 7.]

“Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all its light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny, an aim certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance and ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance.

“My hopes also move towards that goal, but I insist that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied to-day, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true.”

[Emma Goldman, “The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation.” Mother Earth. Volume 1, number 1, March 1906. Pages 9-18.]

“Situating ‘anarcha-feminism’ as movement, however, necessarily limits historical inquiry by ignoring the wide range of influences and relationships that impacted its theoretical development.… Situating ‘anarcha-feminism’ only within the feminist milieu similarly ignores the influences of anarchist philosophy and practice, which played an important part in emergent articulations; interrogating the basis of this framing of ‘anarcha-feminism’ requires a brief historical contexualization. While post-sixties feminism facilitated a platform for the first articulations of anarch@-feminism in the early seventies, the political and cultural radicalism of the New Left and counterculture also played a decisive role in anarch@-feminism’s development.” [Lindsay Grace Weber. On the Edge of All Dichotomies: Anarch@–Feminist Thought, Process and Action, 1970-1983. B.A. Honors thesis. Wesleyan University. Middletown, Connecticut. April, 2009. Page 36.]

“Most of the theory workshop involved women defining what anarcha-feminism was to them, and how they had integrated it into their lives. Some women used anarchism to ‘explore the positive side of struggle.’ One woman said she would be connected to anarchism ‘as long as it was a place to be a rebel.’ Another viewed anarchism as ‘action’ with feminism being ‘what led to that action.’ It seemed that most women, even though they saw anarcha-feminism as a revolutionary force, used it primarily to redefine their personal environment, which leaves unanswered the question of how anarcha-feminism applies to the day-to-day struggles of all women. The question of privilege was raised and the concern is a very real one. All but one of the women at the conference were white and most were middle-class. A lack of class consciousness was apparent in most workshops. Sometimes I was uncomfortably aware that being at the conference seemed too much like being part of an exclusive club, not only because most ‘members’ were white but because they spoke largely of personal oppression, all defined within a middle-class framework. Any movement which claims to be revolutionary but does not incorporate the struggles of poor, working class, Black, and Third World women into its philosophy is not revolutionary – it is no better than the Democratic party.” [Mary Fridely, “Anarcha-feminism: growing stronger.” Off Our Backs: A Women’s News Journal. Volume 8, number 7, July 1978. Page 20.]

“RAG (Revolutionary Anarcha-feminist Group) is a publishing collective based in Dublin, Ireland. They have been working together since 2005 and collectively publish an annual magazine The Rag that melds feminist and anarchist concerns within an Irish (but nonetheless globally orientated) context.…

“The magazine’s production is subject to a particular set of processes in which a non-hierarchical, consensus based method is placed at the forefront of their publishing concerns. This is a central part of the anarcha-feminism which the group enact in creating the magazine.”

[Debi Withers, “Anarcha-feminist process and publishing in Ireland: the RAG collective.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 19, number 1, spring–summer 2011. Pages 9-22.]

“Anarcha-feminism is, ultimately, a tautology. Anarchism seeks the liberation of all human beings from all kinds of oppression and a world without hierarchies, where people freely organise and self-manage all aspects of life and society on the basis of horizontality, equality, solidarity and mutual aid. Consequently, such a struggle necessarily entails working to change hierarchical relationships between the sexes, that is, anarchism is a specific type of feminism.…

“In what follows I will argue that there has long been an anarcha-feminist movement. In particular, I will discuss the contribution to this movement of Mujeres Libres (Free Women), an anarcha-feminist group active during the Spanish civil war, from 1936-1939. Although many anarchists, including Mujeres Libres, rejected a feminist label because feminism was understood to be an ideology of the bourgeoisie, and although I do not call myself an Anarcha-feminist because I purport that anarchism is what best describes my feminism, I argue that anarcha-feminism is useful as both a term and in practice in both anarchist and feminist movements. With regards to the former, anarcha-feminism can serve to ‘mainstream’ gender and feminist struggle, thereby making anarchist practice more consistent with anarchist theory. With regards to the latter, anarcha-feminism can contribute to other feminist critiques of and struggles against gender oppression.”

[Marta Iniguez de Heredia, “History and actuality of Anarcha-feminism: lessons from Spain.” Lilith: A Feminist History Journal. Volume 16, 2007. Pages 44-60.]

“We consider Anarcho-Feminism to be the ultimate and necessary radical stance at this time in world history, far more radical than any form of Marxism.…

“We are all socialists. We refuse to give up this pre-Marxist term which has been used as a synonym by many anarchist thinkers. Another synonym for anarchism is libertarian socialism, as opposed to Statist and authoritarian varieties. Anarchism (from the Greek anarchos — without ruler) is the affirmation of human freedom and dignity expressed in a negative, cautionary term signifying that no person should rule or dominate another person by force or threat of force. Anarchism indicates what people should not do to one another. Socialism, on the other hand, means all the groovy things people can do and build together, once they are able to combine efforts and resources on the basis of common interest, rationality and creativity.…

“As Anarcho-Feminists, we aspire to have the courage to question and challenge absolutely everything — including, when it proves necessary, our own assumptions.”

[Red Rosia and Black Maria. Anarcho-Feminism: Two Statements. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1971. Page 3.]

“This is only a beginning. We come together today as anarcha-feminists excited because of this new beginning. Anarcha-feminism has barely been flushed out, put into action, or recognized as a politic by even ourselves. And many of us have never known of each other’s existence, therefore never knowing what we are capable of. We find it fitting to meet in the streets, where strong social bonds are created and great turns in history unfold. Make friends and comrades this May Day and expect great things to come.” [Editor. Dangerous Spaces: Violent Resistance, Self-Defense, & Insurrectional Struggle Against Gender. Untorelli Press (location unknown). Undated. Page 5.]

“The question then arises whether feminism could not find a better partner in anarchism. Despite the fact that anarchism and Marxism often went on the same path and even converged in workers struggles, the major difference between them is that anarchist thinkers work with a more variegated notion of domination that emphasizes the existence of forms of exploitation that cannot be reduced to economic factors — be they political, cultural or, we should add, sexual. Hence also its happier marriage with feminism: if the relationship between Marxism and feminism has overall been characterized as a dangerous liaison …, which reproduced the same logic of domination occurring between the two sexes, then the relationship between feminism and anarchism seems to be a much more convivial encounter. Historically, the two have converged so often that some have argued that anarchism is by definition feminism …. The point is not simply to register that, from Michail Bakunin to Emma Goldman, and with the only (possible) exception of [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon, anarchism and feminism often went hand in hand. This historical fact signals a deeper theoretical affinity. You can be a Marxist without being a feminist, but you cannot be an anarchist without being a feminist at the same time. Why not?” [Chiara Bottici. Anarchism and Feminism: Toward a Happy Marriage? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2014. Page 1.]

“the defining features of green anarchy include a desire to live in small, selfgoverning communities, individual and collective self-determination, a reconnection with the wild and an understanding that we live only in the present, in the here and now.

“living in the real here and now instead of in the unreal past/future is a discerning feature of many nature based societies and one of the greatest poverties for us in mass society. dredging up dysfunctional childhoods or storing pensions for our old age deny us the being alive of the present. sitting in an office dreaming of the weekend or spending free time engaging with mythical soap opera characters instead of real people is clearly not healthy. equally unwellmaking is having feelings incompatible with the here and now. sitting in the woods with a lover but being miserably occupied with something that happened as a child is the same as not enjoying a feast because once you had felt hungry. the past is behind us. the future might never happen.”

[Mae Bee. A Green Anarchist Project on Freedom and Love. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2004. Page 7.]

“The Natural Society will not be cultured or liberal or advanced or powerful or hardworking or great; it will be warm and well-fed; it will be peaceful, healthy. lazy and parochial. Perhaps that sort of society is not for you, but unbolt the door for those who want to go through. And there may be quite a number, for there would be no taxation which would double your income; it would mean a small plot of land and it would mean being your own boss. And it would work because it has already worked, all over the world.” [Richard Hunt. The Natural Society: A Basis for Green Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 4.]

“Where I first started developing my own brand of ‘green anarcha-feminism’ (if it has to be labeled) was when I discovered ‘eco-feminist’ ideas. These ideas most closely resemble the anti-patriarchal, anti-civilization critique, but much of it is most definitely not compatible with anarchy. Glorification of Goddess-worshipping cultures as indication that a matriarchal society is somehow preferable to patriarchy, is a bunch of crap. This isn’t much different from the pro-statist liberal feminist idea that a woman president would save the world. Some of it is even colonialist (in its co-optation of indigenous wisdom), or ‘essentialist’ in the way it defines womens’ power in terms of our reproductive capacity. As an anarchist I felt alienated from much of ‘ecofeminism,’ but attracted to some of it too. Chellis Glendenning put a whole new spin on it for me.” [Witch Hazel. The Revolt of Adam & Eve: A Green Anarcha-Feminist Perspective. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2002. Page 2.]

“It seems appropriate that I am writing an artice on ‘speciesism’ the same week as the official anniversary of the Holocaust. The dally Missoulian reports that a majority of American high school chlldren cannot correctly identlfy the holocaust as a historical event, nor do they show recognition of the word ‘holocaust.’ It Is my biased belief that future generations will refer to the twentieth century as a combined holocaust of epic dimensions in both human and non-human terms. Not only did we humans accept multiple wars of mass destruction against other humans. In this century, we accepted and perpetrated a gross and extreme global war of wanton mass destruction against other species. To me, It’s all one catastrophe of human character.…

“This is ‘speciesism;’ a belief that logging and logger’s livings are more important than Spotted Owls, rainforests, Siberian Tigers, or the cultural survival or the primitive Penan tribe; that the continued wealth of the American elite is more important than the air we breathe or the ozone layer; that our ‘right’ to develop private lands is weighed up against the right of the Marbled Murrelet to exist.…

“I could state the statistics, bore you with the fact that one hundred species a day become extinct; that the current rate of extinction is faster than the estimated rate of extinction at the end of the age of dinosaurs, when the Earth might have been hit by an asteroid; that our human population will exceed ten billion early next century. It’s too late for numbers.…

“And the resistance? You’re doing something, for Earth’s sake! You are jumping up end down on street corners, screaming at passers-by, wearing a bear suit, or teaching grade-schoolers about ‘the environment,’ or growing organic gardens or ralsing goats. You’re in Greenpeace or Earth First! or the Green Party, or leading wilderness programs or subverting the Forest Service or anything but accepting the status quo. Because at least you aren’t so sick with work or alcohol or drugs or Christianity that you can’t feel good when the coal waters of a creek flow over your toes, when you eat a dirty carrot from your own patch, when your best-beloved hugs you fair-and-square. Because you can understand that the value gained in a summer’s day as a human animal is beyond anything you can earn in a whole summer working in a Nazi corporation. Because when you’re old and grey and children turn and ask you what you did in the Holocaust, you will say with pride that you were in the resistance.”

[Mic Womersley, “Speciesism, Nazis & the New Resistance.” The Black Cat Sabotage Handbook. Third edition. William Rogers, possible editor. Eugene, Oregon: Graybill. 1996. Page 13.]

“Contrary to the fundamentalist viewpoints that see cultivation itself as inherently dominating, the simple act of collecting seeds and replanting them elsewhere to provide more food sources could actually be seen as a complementary development to a gathering-hunting lifestyle. The transportation of seeds through feces is the basis of much plant reproduction in the wild and in the garden, and may have been the inspiration for humyns to begin cultivating certain plants. Even the selection of certain seeds for desired traits is a way humyns have actually enhanced biodiversity by ‘opening up’ a species to diverse, highly adaptable variations. Instead of viewing the original cultivators with suspicion and doubt, why not appreciate the sensitivity and creativity it required for them to adapt to conditions by entering into a more complex and interactive relationship with nature? Can we make a distinction between cultivation and domestication?” [Witch Hazel. Against agriculture & in defense of cultivation. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2003. Page 5.]

“Ours is a world in vertigo. It is a world that swarms with technological mediation, interlacing our daily lives with abstraction, virtuality, and complexity. XF [xenofeminism] constructs a feminism adapted to these realities: a feminism of unprecedented cunning, scale, and vision; a future in which the realization of gender justice and feminist emancipation contribute to a universalist politics assembled from the needs of every human, cutting across race, ability, economic standing, and geographical position. No more futureless repetition on the treadmill of capital, no more submission to the drudgery of labour, productive and reproductive alike, no more reification of the given masked as critique. Our future requires depetrification. XF is not a bid for revolution, but a wager on the long game of history, demanding imagination, dexterity and persistence.…

“XF seizes alienation as an impetus to generate new worlds. We are all alienated – but have we ever been otherwise? It is through, and not despite, our alienated condition that we can free ourselves from the muck of immediacy. Freedom is not a given – and it’s certainly not given by anything ‘natural.’ The construction of freedom involves not less but more alienation; alienation is the labour of freedom’s construction. Nothing should be accepted as fixed, permanent, or ‘given’ – neither material conditions nor social forms. XF mutates, navigates and probes every horizon. Anyone who’s been deemed ‘unnatural’ in the face of reigning biological norms, anyone who’s experienced injustices wrought in the name of natural order, will realize that the glorification of ‘nature’ has nothing to offer us – the queer and trans among us, the differently-abled, as well as those who have suffered discrimination due to pregnancy or duties connected to child-rearing. XF is vehemently anti naturalist. Essentialist naturalism reeks of theology – the sooner it is exorcised, the better.…

“Why is there so little explicit, organized effort to repurpose technologies for progressive gender political ends? XF seeks to strategically deploy existing technologies to re-engineer the world. Serious risks are built into these tools; they are prone to imbalance, abuse, and exploitation of the weak. Rather than pretending to risk nothing, XF advocates the necessary assembly of techno-political interfaces responsive to these risks. Technology isn’t inherently progressive. Its uses are fused with culture in a positive feedback loop that makes linear sequencing, prediction, and absolute caution impossible. Technoscientific innovation must be linked to a collective theoretical and political thinking in which women, queers, and the gender non-conforming play an unparalleled role.…

“Xenofeminism is a rationalism. To claim that reason or rationality is ‘by nature’ a patriarchal enterprise is to concede defeat. It is true that the canonical ‘history of thought’ is dominated by men, and it is male hands we see throttling existing institutions of science and technology. But this is precisely why feminism must be a rationalism – because of this miserable imbalance, and not despite it. There is no ‘feminine’ rationality, nor is there a ‘masculine’ one. Science is not an expression but a suspension of gender. If today it is dominated by masculine egos, then it is at odds with itself – and this contradiction can be leveraged. Reason, like information, wants to be free, and patriarchy cannot give it freedom. Rationalism must itself be a feminism. XF marks the point where these claims intersect in a two-way dependency. It names reason as an engine of feminist emancipation, and declares the right of everyone to speak as no one in particular.…

“The radical opportunities afforded by developing (and alienating) forms of technological mediation should no longer be put to use in the exclusive interests of capital, which, by design, only benefits the few. There are incessantly proliferating tools to be annexed, and although no one can claim their comprehensive accessibility, digital tools have never been more widely available or more sensitive to appropriation than they are today. This is not an elision of the fact that a large amount of the world’s poor is adversely affected by the expanding technological industry (from factory workers labouring under abominable conditions to the Ghanaian villages that have become a repository for the e-waste of the global powers) but an explicit acknowledgement of these conditions as a target for elimination. Just as the invention of the stock market was also the invention of the crash, Xenofeminism knows that technological innovation must equally anticipate its systemic condition responsively.…

“We take politics that exclusively valorize the local in the guise of subverting currents of global abstraction, to be insufficient. To secede from or disavow capitalist machinery will not make it disappear. Likewise, suggestions to pull the lever on the emergency brake of embedded velocities, the call to slow down and scale back, is a possibility available only to the few – a violent particularity of exclusivity – ultimately entailing catastrophe for the many. Refusing to think beyond the microcommunity, to foster connections between fractured insurgencies, to consider how emancipatory tactics can be scaled up for universal implementation, is to remain satisfied with temporary and defensive gestures. XF is an affirmative creature on the offensive, fiercely insisting on the possibility of large-scale social change for all of our alien kin.”

[Laboria Cuboniks. Xenofeminism: A Politics For Alienation. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Pages 3-6.]

“The main part of the article examines recent theoretical connections between queer theory and anarchism … and the role of anarcha-feminism in the genealogy of what I term ‘queer anarchism,’ leading on to a discussion of a particular queer anarchist group in Buenos Aires called Proyectil Fetal (Fetal Projectile), and the critical debate surrounding the group’s work.…

“But what characterizes the anarchist philosophy? The term ‘anarchism’ is derived from the Greek for ‘no ruler’ …. Many definitions have been made of anarchism. The essence of this philosophy is a deep questioning of hierarchies and a critique of exploitation and domination, with a strong dedication to equality and strategy for change. If a feminist critique centres on the concept of patriarchy, the lynchpin of an anarchist critique is the more general concept of hierarchy. If combined, feminism plus anarchism become anarchist feminism, or anarcha-feminism, a strand of thought that plays an essential part in the genealogy of queer anarchism.…

“… I understand queer theory broadly as the study of heteronormativity and other normative discourses related to sexuality and gender. Marxist queer theorists subject these concerns to a broader critique of capitalism …. ‘Queer anarchism’ … critically assesses hegemonic discourses related not only to gender and sexuality, but to any form of domination, including but not reduced to a critique of the mechanics of exploitation and domination that exist within capitalism.”

[Gwendolyn Windpassinger, ‘Queering anarchism in post-2001 Buenos Aires.’ Sexualities. Volume 13, number 4, 2010. Pages 495-509.]

“Queer theory denaturalizes hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and political influence, and is a valuable tool for anarchist practice. Queer theory questions what is ‘normal’ and what creates hierarchical differences between us, opening up new sites of struggle outside of class politics alone. From feminist theory emerged the idea that gender is socially and not biologically constructed, and therefore not innate, natural, stable or ‘essential’ to someone’s identity due to their ‘biology.’ Instead, gender is a product of social norms, individual behaviors, and institutional power. Gay/ lesbian studies added to the discourse around gender and sexuality by introducing homosexuality and LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered] identities as areas to be queried. Following the work of feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies, queer theory understands sexuality and sexual behaviors as similarly socially constructed and historically contingent. Queer theory allows for a multiplicity of sexual practices that challenge heteronormativity, such as non monogamy, BDSM [bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism] relationships, and sex work.

“Queer theory opens up a space to critique how we relate to each other socially in a distinctly different way than typical anarchist practice. Where classical anarchism is mostly focused on analyzing power relations between people, the economy, and the state, queer theory understands people in relation to the normal and the deviant, creating infinite possibilities for resistance. Queer theory seeks to disrupt the ‘normal’ with the same impulse that anarchists do with relations of hierarchy, exploitation, and oppression. We can use queer theory to conceptualize new relationship forms and social relations that resist patriarchy and other oppressions by creating a distinctly ‘queer-anarchist’ form of social relation. By allowing for multiple and fluid forms of identifying and relating sexually that go beyond a gay/straight binary, a queer anarchist practice allows for challenging the state and capitalism, as well as challenging sexual oppressions and norms that are often embedded in the state and other hierarchical social relations.…

“A queer rejection of the institution of marriage can be based on an anarchist opposition to hierarchical relationship forms and state assimilation. An anarchist who takes care of someone’s children as an alternative way of creating family can be understood as enacting a queer relation. Gustav Landauer in Revolution and Other Writings writes that ‘The state is a social relationship; a certain way of people relating to one another. It can be destroyed by creating new social relationships; i.e., by people relating to one another differently.’ As anarchists interested and working in areas of sexual politics and in fighting all oppressions, we can create a new ‘queer-anarchist’ form of relating that combines anarchist concepts of mutual aid, solidarity, and voluntary association with a queer analysis of normativity and power. We must strive to create and accept new forms of relating in our anarchist movements that smash the state and that fight oppressions in and outside of our bedrooms.

“One way that we can relate socially with a queer anarchist analysis is by practicing alternatives to existing state and heteronormative conceptualizations of sexuality. We can embrace a multiplicity of sexual practices, including BDSM, polyamory, and queer heterosexual practices—not setting them as new norms, but as practices among many varieties that are often marginalized under our normative understandings of sexuality. In polyamorous relationships, the practice of having more than one partner challenges compulsory monogamy and state conceptions of what is an appropriate or normal social relation. Polyamory is just one of the practices that arise when we think of relationship forms that can (but do not automatically) embody distinctly queer and anarchist aspects. BDSM allows for the destabilizing of power relations, by performing and deconstructing real-life power relations in a consensual, negotiated setting. Queer heterosexual practices allow for fluidity of gender and sexual practices within heterosexual relationships. Although practicing these relationship forms alone does not make one a revolutionary, we can learn from these practices how to create new conceptualizations of social relations and, importantly, challenge normative indoctrination into our society’s constrictive, limited, and hierarchical sexual culture.”

[Susan Song. Polyamory and Queer Anarchism: Infinite Possibilities for Resistance. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Pages 4-5.]

“Judith Butler may have taught me that the performance of a role is merely a copy without original, but it is meditation that lets Queering Anarchism me see it with clear vision. Sitting down each morning, focusing my mind, observing the thoughts and emotions that pass through, I learn to not identify with them, to not get caught up in them, to not reject them. I’m learning the “art of allowing everything to be as it is,” which in turn helps with the many challenges of caring ‘for the world as it is,’ of seeing beauty in wounds. I’m learning to be playful with my sense of who I am, to let go the borders, the policing. It’s so much easier for me to connect with others when the walls of the heart, of the individualized self, come down. And it’s easier to let go of the walls if I don’t judge them. Of course we learn to protect ourselves.” [Jamie Heckert. Anarchy without Opposition. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 9.]

“Anarchist politics are usually defined by their opposition to state, capitalism, patriarchy, and other hierarchies. My aim in this essay is to queer that notion of anarchism in a number of ways. To queer is to make strange, unfamiliar, weird; it comes from an old German word meaning to cross. What new possibilities arise when we learn to cross, to blur, to undermine, or overflow the hierarchical and binary oppositions we have been taught to believe in?

“Hierarchy relies on separation. Or rather, the belief in hierarchy relies on the belief in separation. Neither is fundamentally true. Human beings are extrusions of the ecosystem—we are not separate, independent beings. We are interdependent bodies, embedded in a natural world itself embedded in a vast universe. Likewise, all the various social patterns we create and come to believe in are imaginary (albeit with real effects on our bodyminds). Their existence depends entirely on our belief, our obedience, our behavior. These in turn are shaped by imagined divisions. To realize that the intertwined hierarchical oppositions of hetero/homo, man/woman, whiteness/color, mind/body, rational/emotional, civilized/savage, social/natural, and more are all imaginary is perhaps a crucial step in letting go of them. How might we learn to cross the divide that does not really exist except in our embodied minds?

“This, for me, is the point of queer: to learn to see the world through new eyes, to see not only what might be possible but also what already exists (despite the illusions of hierarchy). I write this essay as an invitation to perceive anarchism, to perceive life, differently. I’m neither interested in recruiting you, nor turning you queer. My anarchism is not better than your anarchism. Who am I to judge? Nor is my anarchism already queer. It is always becoming queer. How? By learning to keep queering, again and again, so that my perspective, my politics, and my presence can be fresh, alive.

“Queering might allow recognition that life is never contained by the boxes and borders the mind invents. Taxonomies of species or sexualities, categories of race or citizenship, borders between nations or classes or types of politics—these are fictions. They are never necessary. To be sure, fictions have their uses. Perhaps in us- ing them, we may learn to hold them lightly so that we, in turn, are not held by them.”

“Judith Butler may have taught me that the performance of a role is merely a copy without original, but it is meditation that lets Queering Anarchism me see it with clear vision. Sitting down each morning, focusing my mind, observing the thoughts and emotions that pass through, I learn to not identify with them, to not get caught up in them, to not reject them. I’m learning the “art of allowing everything to be as it is,” which in turn helps with the many challenges of caring ‘for the world as it is,’ of seeing beauty in wounds. I’m learning to be playful with my sense of who I am, to let go the borders, the policing. It’s so much easier for me to connect with others when the walls of the heart, of the individualized self, come down. And it’s easier to let go of the walls if I don’t judge them. Of course we learn to protect ourselves.” [Jamie Heckert. Anarchy without Opposition. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 9.]

[Jamie Heckert. Anarchy without Opposition. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Page 2 and 9.]

“Anarchism as a lived praxis demonstrates that critical scholars have a role to play in social struggles, rather than being absent. In this sense, anarchism seems to entail what being critical is all about: emancipation from oppressive structures. Marxist (-inclined) literatures can gain valuable inspiration from anarchist transformative praxis, such as real existing prefiguration that points towards an egalitarian distribution of wealth and power, and that takes into the account the grassroots level as a crucial political site. At the same time, the anarchist approach to social transformation is also limited in the tendency to neglect deeply engrained macro-structures that cannot easily be changed, such as global capitalism. In social spaces in which the economic sphere is capitalist, capitalist logics tend to be more dominant than other logics.” [Angela Wigger, “Anarchism as emancipatory theory and praxis: Implications for critical Marxist research.” Capital & Class. Volume 40, number 1, 2016. Pages 129-145.]

“When I speak of Communism I’m not talking about the surrendering of property to some spooky and religious ‘Us’ that dictates our behavior. I’m talking about the goal of communization: existence without exchange, money, commodities, etc. I’m talking about the working class itself ceasing to exist as the working class. This is Communism by the people involved with it for their benefit, a system the Pirates of old utilized ….

“Egoist-Communism might be thought of as Mutualism without Markets, a honeycomb of nonhierarchical mafias looking to live life as joyously as they can and free from the false divisions of race, nationality, class, or gender. It promotes differentiation, embraces chaos, and takes gangs of individuals as its organizational unit instead of a manufactured society. It is the abolition of all that limits the Unique and the search for other like-minded souls to increase each other’s power. How you do so will ultimately be up to you.

“Don’t let the name fool you, this isn’t some radical new idea. This is what humanity has been doing at parties, after disasters, before funerals, and between sheets since the whole damn thing began. Instead of stealing those moments between ‘work’ and whatever else this techno-hellscape forces onto us, we desire to make it our entire mission.

“That is Egoist-Communism, its praxis and its goal: life in the pursuit of life, where individual satisfaction and the enjoyment of others rotates endlessly without form.”

[Dr. Bones. Egoist-Communism: What It Is and What It Isn’t. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 3-4.]

“Nature, civilization, these things are not real. They represent real things but our representation is just that: our own. These things are abstract concepts, symbols of symbols we once used as useful categories now taken a life of their own. Nature is a word we use to divide up ourselves and the world around us, a placeholder for some gigantic ‘Other’ we’ve come from yet can’t seem to recall; Civilization could mean growing organic bananas in the alps or cars powered by water but instead it’s become herds of human beings crowded into cities and under constant surveillance.

“How different life might be if we gave up the chase of ideals and set our cause upon ourselves.”

[Dr. Bones. There Is No Civilization, There is No Wild. There Is Only You and Me. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 4.]

“The one thing capitalism really struggles with is disease. Illness of any kind is anathema to the entire system, throws everything out of whack. People must be healthy enough to work and buy products otherwise the Few cannot enjoy the spoils of the Many. Disease, and even rumors of disease, are enough to cause employers to offer free flu shots, tobacco cessation products, and mental health treatment provided you’ll continue to show up and perform your allotted task.

“This is not to say Capitalism wants you HEALTHY however. On the contrary, a sick worker is fine so as long as they’re spending money on NOT being sick. The nation’s five largest for-profit insurers closed 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion. Between 2000 and 2006, wages in the United States increased by 3.8%, but health care premiums increased by 87%. Clearly there is money to be made in treating illness, and that makes quite a few of the Few happy.

“But when the worker gets really sick, the kind of sick where life is pain and every breath becomes a poisonous cloud of infectious disease…well, it becomes another matter entirely.…

“Capitalism has no time for the ill, no time for those who can’t keep pace with the levels of output required from their owners. To be ill is to be ‘off,’ and in dire need of fixing. Illness becomes part of a weird binary system, a yes-or-no question workers must answer all the time. If we can maintain our highly regimented lives at the behest of those around us, we are ‘well;’ if, however, we display behaviors that do not fit the mold, if our souls and bodies refuse the psychic armor and physical output required to generate value, we become breathing wastebaskets.…

“One could imagine the scene easily: my symptoms will be calculated by a balding man in his late 40’s and I’d be handed a prescription to ’get better,’ another person in ‘recovery’ added to the 400% increase in anti-depression medication use. Eventually, after a few weeks or months, a 9mm bullet sprays pink brain matter formerly belonging to Dr. Bones against a wall. Tears, wailing, the gnashing of teeth soon follow, but not because of side effects or a system hell-bent on killing the weird.…

“On scales large and small, this sociological terrorism is repeated everyday. Society is nothing more than the madness Capitalism has deemed healthy for its own existence. Young boys locked in classrooms, women locked up in mental wards, all this in the name of making them “well” enough to function in a system where sociopaths are rewarded with praise and promoted to positions of leadership. Even having anti-authoritarian opinions is enough to get you looked at funny, held against your will, and shot up with Thorazine in the name of social good.

“Johanna [Hedva] writes that, above all: ‘Sick Woman Theory is an insistence that most modes of political protest are internalized, lived, embodied, suffering, and no doubt invisible.’ …

“The Sick Woman Theory reaches far farther than mere illness. It critiques the entire idea of normal. Anarchism should be built on real people, real experiences, rather then mental constructs that easily filter people into ‘sick’ or ‘well’ binaries like masculine/feminine, violent/peaceful, soft/hard, magical/secular.”

[Dr. Bones. Too Weird to Live: The Case for the Individual in a Sick Woman’s World. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Pages 1-7.]

“To be an Anarchist, a Communist, an Anti-Capitalist or Intersectional Insurgent is to be potentially marked for death. This is not a metaphor. This is real life.” [Dr. Bones. It’s Time for Anarchists to Pick Up A Gun. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 3.]

“In late 2014, I was sick with a chronic condition that, about every 12 to 18 months, gets bad enough to render me, for about five months each time, unable to walk, drive, do my job, sometimes speak or understand language, take a bath without assistance, and leave the bed. This particular flare coincided with the Black Lives Matter protests, which I would have attended unremittingly, had I been able to. I live one block away from MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, a predominantly Latino neighborhood and one colloquially understood to be the place where many immigrants begin their American lives. The park, then, is not surprisingly one of the most active places of protest in the city.…

“… as I lay there [in bed], unable to march, hold up a sign, shout a slogan that would be heard, or be visible in any traditional capacity as a political being, the central question of Sick Woman Theory formed: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? …

“Sick Woman Theory is for those who are faced with their vulnerability and unbearable fragility, every day, and so have to fight for their experience to be not only honored, but first made visible. For those who, in Audre Lorde’s words, were never meant to survive: because this world was built against their survival. It’s for my fellow spoonies [persons living with chronic illnesses]. You know who you are, even if you’ve not been attached to a diagnosis: one of the aims of Sick Woman Theory is to resist the notion that one needs to be legitimated by an institution, so that they can try to fix you. You don’t need to be fixed, my queens – it’s the world that needs the fixing.…

“Sick Woman Theory is an insistence that most modes of political protest are internalized, lived, embodied, suffering, and no doubt invisible. Sick Woman Theory redefines existence in a body as something that is primarily and always vulnerable, following from Judith Butler’s work on precarity and resistance. Because the premise insists that a body is defined by its vulnerability, not temporarily affected by it, the implication is that it is continuously reliant on infrastructures of support in order to endure, and so we need to re-shape the world around this fact. Sick Woman Theory maintains that the body and mind are sensitive and reactive to regimes of oppression – particularly our current regime of neoliberal, white-supremacist, imperial-capitalist, cis-hetero-patriarchy. It is that all of our bodies and minds carry the historical trauma of this, that it is the world itself that is making and keeping us sick.”

[Johanna Hedva, “Sick Woman Theory: Johanna Hedva lives with chronic illness and her sick woman theory is for those who were never meant to survive but did.” Mask. The Not Again issue, 2015. Online magazine. No pagination.]

“In unpacking the nature of the relationship that anarchist activists and authors have with anthropology, we show that anarchists are engaged in a form of critique that is much more than mere wishful thinking as per traditional accounts of anarchism as ‘ideology.’ A great deal of anarchist writing concerns ‘actually-existing-anarchism’ as opposed to the ‘anarchism-to-come.’ It seeks the generalisation and spread of alternative, marginal and indigenous social practices, as opposed to the imposition intellectually, intuitively and politically of an ab initio [Latin, ab initiō, from the beginning] ‘normative ideal’ of the kind associated with traditional modernist theorising. These practices include most obviously forms of self-organisation, cooperative economic activity, non-monetised forms of interaction and the generation of social bonds built on solidarity and reciprocity, friendship and mutual enjoyment.” [Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey, “Beyond the state: Anthropology and ‘actually-existing-anarchism.’” Critique of Anthropology. Volume 32, number 2, 2012. Pages 143-157.]

“Anarchists and libertarian communists have traditionally opposed authoritarian Marxism from the perspective of anti-authoritarianism and anti-statism. But the state is only one structural element? albeit an integral one?in a totality which is the bureaucratic-technological megamachine. Opposing the state while at the same time defending technology or remaining indifferent to it is comparable to opposing the police force while saying nothing about the military. They are part of a unitary whole.…

“The technocrats-out-of-power of the UCC [‘Union of Concerned Commies’ in the San Francisco Bay area] are fascinated with high technology; one can only suspect that they aspire to become its technical commissars. Their assurance that their vision of technology is compatible with freedom are as convincing as similar claims of Marxists who believe that state power can be made to serve humanity.…

“Anarchists who oppose the state and ignore technology have no means to counter Marxists; they result in being merely another variation of leftism.…

“… The anarchist and libertarian communists who fixate on the political apparatus and fail to see the roots of this new totalitarianism in the modern massified technological and bureaucratic system, are merely promoting a flabby brand of Marxism, and will contribute to the edification of the new state–technological despotism, just as surely as will the Marxists who openly proclaim it.

“It is not enough to oppose the forms of oppression which characterize the past?capital is already rendering them obsolete. The great challenge that we face is to discern the new forms which domination is taking and aim our struggle against them. To fail to do so is to remain the perpetual victims of the future.”

[George Bradford, “Marxism, Anarchism and the Roots of the New Totalitarianism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1981. Pages 4-6.]

“Who can predict the anarchism to come? No one, obviously. However, there exists a principled reason that allows us to affirm with complete certainty that this coming anarchism, and which is already revealing its face, will necessarily be different from that which we inherited and which we are already familiar with. In effect, anarchism is not only a terrific demand for freedom, perhaps the most extreme that has ever been expressed, but also consists of a political thought critical of domination, joined with a political practice that struggles against it. It is, nevertheless, in the heart of struggles against domination, in any of its forms, where anarchism is forged and where it acquires a good part of its characteristics.…

“Next to its inevitable differences with classical anarchism, a second consideration that we can advance, also in full confidence, is that to continue to be anarchism instead of becoming something else, the new anarchism should preserve some of the constitutive elements of the instituted anarchism. It is these elements that I like to call ‘the anarchist invariant,’ an invariant that unites the current and future anarchism, and that will continue to define, therefore, the anarchism to come.”

[Tomás Ibáñez. The anarchism to come. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 3 and 8.]

“Democratic confederalism is open towards other political groups and factions. It is flexible, multi-cultural, anti-monopolistic, and consensus-oriented. Ecology and feminism are central pillars. In the frame of this kind of self-administration an alternative economy will become necessary, which increases the resources of the society instead of exploiting them and thus does justice to the manifold needs of the society.” [Abdullah Öcalan. Democratic Confederalism. International Initiative, translators. London: Transmedia Publishing Ltd. 2011. Page 21.]

“In democratic confederalism there is no room for any kind of hegemony striving. This is particularly true in the field of ideology. Hegemony is a principle that is usually followed by the classic type of civilization. Democratic civilizations reject hegemonic powers and ideologies. Any ways of expression which cut across the boundaries of democratic self-administration would carry self-administration and freedom of expression ad absurdum. The collective handling of matters of the society needs understanding, respect of dissenting opinions and democratic ways of decision-making. This is in contrast to the understanding of leadership in the capitalist modernity where arbitrary bureaucratic decisions of nation-state character are diametrically opposed to the democratic-confederate leadership in line with ethic foundations. In democratic confederalism leadership institutions do not need ideological legitimization. Hence, they need not strive for hegemony.” [Abdullah Öcalan. Democratic Confederalism. International Initiative, translators. London: Transmedia Publishing Ltd. 2011. Page 30.]

“Democratic confederalism understands itself as a coordination model for a democratic nation. It provides a framework, within which interalia minorities, religious communities, cultural groups, gender-specific groups and other societal groups can organize autonomously. This model may also be called a way of organization for democratic nations and cultures.… This project builds on the self-government of the local communities and is organized in the form of open councils, town councils, local parliaments, and larger congresses. The citizens themselves are the agents of this kind of self-government, not state-based authorities. The principle of federal self-government has no restrictions. It can even be continued across borders in order to create multinational democratic structures. Democratic confederalism prefers flat hierarchies so as to further decision finding and decision making at the level of the communities.” [Abdullah Öcalan. War and Peace in Kurdistan: Perspectives for a political solution of the Kurdish question. Second edition. International Initiative, translators. London: Transmedia Publishing Ltd. 2009. Page 32.]

“The disappointment experienced due to failure of any struggle, be it for freedom or equality, or be it a democratic, moral, political or class struggle bears the imprint of the archetypal struggle for power relationship, the one between woman and man. From this relationship stem all forms of relationship that foster inequality, slavery, despotism, fascism and militarism. If we want to construe true meaning to terms such as equality, freedom, democracy and socialism that we so often use, we need to analyse and shatter the ancient web of relations that has been woven around women. There is no other way of attaining true equality (with due allowance for diversity), freedom, democracy and morality.” [Abdullah Öcalan. Liberating Life: Woman’s Revolution. International Initiative, translators. London: Transmedia Publishing Ltd. 2013. Page 11.]

“In describing me as ‘feared and worshipped,’ I detect hostility towards those who are forced to rely on their self-belief in their struggle against slavery, massacres and policies of denial. Since I have been imprisoned under conditions of solitary confinement on an island for the last 14 years, it is difficult to see how I can be credibly described as a source of fear for anyone except perhaps my captors.” [Abdullah Öcalan, “Reply: Letter: My real role in Kurds’ struggle for freedom.” The Guardian. Newspaper. London. January 21st, 2014. Page 29.]

“The difficult truth is that acceptance of the label ‘left’ means acceptance of our oppositional relationship to the dominant culture. But face the facts, fellow dissidents: calling for a ‘new paradigm’ means having a leftist relationship to the ‘old paradigm’!

“So much for ‘neither left nor right.’ And when the world’s going to Hell, who wants to be in front?

“I propose to organize a new politico-spiritual tendency within the Greens! I am issuing a ‘call’ on behalf of the ‘Left Daoist Network.’ We Left Daoists have lacked nothing but a slogan, and this sad state of affairs is about to end. We considered calling ourselves ‘The Left Wing of the Right Brain.’ But this will not do, since we Daoists, believing in the Yin [Chinese, 陰, yīn, ‘dark’] and Yang [Chinese, 陽, yáng, ‘bright’] of all things, cannot choose one brain over another, or even one piece of a brain over another piece. Thus, the slogan of the Left Daoists: ‘Neither Left Brain nor Right Brain, but A Head!’”

[Max Cafard. The Surre(gion)alist Manifesto and Other Writings. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Exquisite Corpse. 2003. Pages 20-21.]

“In contemporary political theory, libertarianism and communitarianism are looked upon more or less as opposite ends of the political spectrum. Thus, this work, which is in large part the elaboration of a libertarian communitarianism, might be met with a certain skepticism, and, indeed, might even be seen as entirely self-contradictory. But such skepticism would reveal more than anything the unfortunate limits of contemporary political discourse, and, more particularly, those of its dominant Anglo-American forms of expression. The actual existence of a phenomenon is a powerful argument in favor of its possibility. And there is, in fact, a long tradition of libertarian communitarian thought, a tradition that possesses considerable coherence and consistency. There exists, moreover, a vast range of historical phenomena that have inspired this tradition, and which instantiate many of its claims concerning social possibilities. The goal here is not only to continue this tradition and defend it, but also to explore what it would mean to realize its most radical implications. It is to show how a radically anarchistic conception of freedom and a radically communitarian conception of solidarity complement and fulfill one another. It is to show, to paraphrase Bakunin, that liberty without solidarity is privilege and injustice, while solidarity without liberty is slavery and despotism. It is to defend the thesis that it is to the degree that these values are synthesized in the free community that both injustice and despotism can be avoided.” [John P. Clark. The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism. New York: Bloomsbury Academic imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 2013. Page 1.]

“… by immersing oneself in the particularities of local issues and struggles, one discovers how they are related in very specific ways to the global capitalist economy, the global nation-state system, the global system of industrial technology, neocolonialism, various forms of racism and ethnic domination, patriarchal values and institutions, the global ecological crisis, and, indeed, every significant dimension of the world system, and the complex ways that all these elements interact at various levels, including the national, regional, bioregional, ecosystemic, local, and even personal ones. One discovers that the more deeply one delves into the particular, the more the universal appears in its greatest concreteness and specificity.” [John P. Clark. The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism. New York: Bloomsbury Academic imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 2013. Page 23.]

“Many traditions have recognized the importance of the traumatic breakthrough. In the Buddhist tradition, the primary teaching is that one must be shaken out of complacency and come to the shocking realization of the universality of sickness, aging, and death, if one is ever to attain wisdom and compassion. In the Jewish tradition, a break with everyday reality and the traumatic experience of the sacred is described the beginning of wisdom. In the vision quest of indigenous traditions, extreme stresses are part of the path to a spiritual breakthrough. Both Western and Asian mysticism describe a traumatic ‘dark night of the soul’ that is part of the path to spiritual awakening. Finally, dialectic is a kind of philosophical vision quest that works through traumatic challenges to all stereotyped thinking. In each case, trauma releases the ability to look at the gaps in our supposed reality and the incoherence in our conventional accounts of the world. Trauma is an encounter with death, but it is also an opportunity for rebirth. It helps us to see the possibility of the impossible and to think the unthinkable.” [John P. Clark, “The Impossible Community: An Interview With John P. Clark on Grassroots Revolution.” Truthout. June 9th, 2013. Online publication. No pagination.]

“… power in networks is a function of one’s connectedness to others and one’s ability to communicate and exchange resources with others in the network—it is not where you are, but who you know that matters. Most social networks are asymmetric—that is, they are composed of clusters of strongly interconnected actors. These clusters, in turn, are only weakly connected to one another. The majority of connections, therefore, are local, and the majority of exchanges occur on a local level. This resonates strongly with communitarian anarchism ….” [T. Aaron Wachhaus, “Anarchy as a Model for Network Governance.” Public Administration Review. Volume 72, issue 1, January/February 2012. Pages 33-42.]

“In order to carry out this examination and evaluation [of ‘class struggle anarchist groups’], some clarification of the terminology employed throughout the text is required. The organisations identified under the heading of ‘class struggle anarchism’ include those that identify themselves as such, as well as those from autonomist marxist and situationist-inspired traditions. The organisations and propaganda groups examined include the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), Anarchist Federation (AF) (formerly the Anarchist Communist Federation (ACF), Anarchist Youth Network (AYN), Anarchist Workers Group (AWG), Aufheben, Black Flag, Class War Federation (CWF), Earth First! (EF!), Here and Now, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Reclaim the Streets (RTS), Solidarity, Solidarity Federation (SolFed) (formerly the Direct Action Movement (DAM)), Subversion, White Overall Movement Building Libertarian Effective Struggles (WOMBLES), Wildcat and Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM), many local and regional federations such as Haringey Solidarity Group, Herefordshire Anarchists and Surrey Anarchist Group as well as the precursors to all these associations.

“These organisations and their tactics can be said to form a semi-coherent subject for this book as they meet four hesitantly proposed criteria. The first is a complete rejection of capitalism and the market economy, which demarcates anarchism from reformist politics and extreme liberal variants (often referred to as ‘anarcho-capitalism’ or in America as ‘libertarianism’). The second criteria is an egalitarian concern for the interests and freedoms of others as part of creating nonhierarchical social relations; the third is a complete rejection of state power and other quasi-state mediating forces, which distinguishes libertarianism from Leninism. The final criterion, alongside the other three is the basis for the framework used here for assessing anarchist methods: a recognition that means have to prefigure ends. The first three criteria contain elements of ‘anti-representation,’ dismissing oppressive practices that construct identities through market principles of class or wealth, party or nation, leader or citizen. The last criterion, prefiguration, is indicative of the reflexivity of anarchist methods which not only react against existing conditions but are also ‘self-creative.’ These four criteria create the ‘ideal type’ used to assess the actions of contemporary groups.”

[Benjamin Franks. Rebel Alliances: The means and ends of contemporary British anarchisms. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2006. Pages 12-13.]

“… [Our] point is not to dismiss other libertarian ideas and the wide range of antiauthoritarian ideas that have developed in many cultures but to suggest that we need to differentiate anarchism and syndicalism from other currents, including libertarian ones, the better to understand both anarchism and these other tendencies. ‘Class struggle’ anarchism, sometimes called revolutionary or communist anarchism, is not a type of anarchism; in our view, it is the only anarchism. We are aware that our approach contradicts some long-standing definitions, but we maintain that the meaning of anarchism is neither arbitrary nor just a matter of opinion—the historical record demonstrates that there is a core set of beliefs.” [Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt. Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2009. Page 19.]

“This chapter examines how anarcho-syndicalist ideas were adapted to Peruvian contexts, primarily in Lima-Callao and the southern region of Arequipa, Cuzco, and Puno during the 1910s and 1920s, the heyday of Peruvian anarcho-syndicalism. It analyzes the ways anarchosyndicalism challenged the combination of oligarchic rule by Peru’s creole planter class (sugar and cotton) and British and US imperialism in the form of economic control over the lucrative export sectors (copper, silver, oil) and domestic manufacturing (e.g. textiles). This challenge mainly consisted of organising labour unions and cultural associations, fostering a radical proletarian counterculture, and promoting class struggles.” [Steven J. Hirsch, “Peruvian Anarcho-Syndicalism: Adapting Transnational Influences And Forging Counterhegemonic Practices, 1905?1930.” Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870?1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution. Steven J. Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt, editors. Leiden, the Netherlands, and Boston, Massachusetts: Leiden. 2010. Pages 227-271.]

“The question always before anarchists is how to act in the present moment of struggle against capitalism and the state. As new forms of social struggles are becoming more clearly understood, this question becomes even more important. In order to answer these questions we have to clarify the relationship between anarchists and the wider social movement of the exploited and the nature of that movement itself. First of all, we need to note that the movement of the exploited is always in course. There is no use in anarchists, who wish to destroy capitalism and the state in their entirety, waiting to act on some future date, as predicted by an objectivist reading of capitalism or a determinist understanding of history as if one were reading the stars. This is the most secure way of keeping us locked in the present forever. The revolutionary movement of the exploited multitude never totally disappears, no matter how hidden it is. Above all this is a movement to destroy the separation between us, the exploited, and our conditions of existence, that which we need to live. It is a movement of society against the state. We can see this movement, however incoherent or unconscious, in the actions of Brazil’s peasants who take the land they need to survive, when the poor steal, or when someone attacks the state that maintains the system of exclusion and exploitation. We can see this movement in the actions of those who attack the machinery that destroys our very life-giving environment. Within this current, anarchists are a minority. And, as conscious anarchists, we don’t stand outside the movement, propagandizing and organizing it; we act with this current, helping to reanimate and sharpen its struggles.” [Anonymous. The Anarchist Ethic in the Age of the Anti-Globalization Movement. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2001. Page 3.]

“In the Anarchist Federation we believe that we can be one part of this fight. We see ourselves as part of a tradition that stretches back throughout the history of resistance to capitalism, a tradition that can be called anarchist communist although not everyone involved in it would have seen themselves that way. We believe that this set of ideas and ways of organising is our best hope of destroying capitalism and creating something better.

“As the first of our aims and principles says, we are ‘an organisation of revolutionary class struggle anarchists. We aim for the abolition of all hierarchy, and work for the creation of a world-wide classless society: anarchist communism.’ This pamphlet sets out to explain what all this means and how we think we can do it.”

[Editor. Introduction to Anarchist Communism. London: Anarchist Federation. April, 2013. Page 6.]

“Class-struggle anarchists … seek to mobilize the working class on its own terms, by building mass organizations that struggle for the interests of the oppressed. At the same time, their own specific anarchist organizations work to bring the experience of past struggles into the current struggles, act as a centre for debate and as a link between militants, and form a pole of attraction for new militants. Anarchy is achieved as the result of a final and decisive confrontation between the mass organizations and the state, with the former overseeing the transition to anarchist communism and evolving into society itself.” [Uri Gordon, “Afterword: Anarchist Geographies and Revolutionary Strategies.” Antipode. Volume 44, number 5, November 2012. Pages 1742-1751.]

“[Karl] Marx presented his thinking as an integral whole. ‘Marxism’ (or ‘scientific socialism’) included the critique of political economy (my topic here). It included a broader background method for studying society: historical materialism. It included a philosophical approach: dialectical materialism. It included practical political strategies: building workers’ electoral parties and labor unions.

“This was a total worldview, justified because it was going to be the worldview of a rising new class, the proletariat. Because I cannot accept the totality of this worldview, I do not regard myself as a Marxist. I am a ‘Marxist-informed anarchist.’ The bourgeoisie, the current ruling class, has always had more than one philosophy, economic theory, and political strategy. Why not the working class?

“As it turned out, Marxism, or something calling itself ‘Marxism,’ did become the ideology of a rising new class: the state-capitalist collective bureaucracy. Within the growing managerial and bureaucratic layer of capitalism, a section became radicalized, rejecting rule by the traditional bourgeoisie. Instead, they saw themselves as the new (benevolent) rulers. For them, a variety of Marxism became a justifying ideology and a guide to power.…

“I do not at all deny the sincerity of Marx and [Friedrich] Engels’s libertarian-democratic, humanistic, and proletarian views. This was—and remains—a real and valuable aspect of Marx and Engels’s Marxism, subjectively the heart of what they were trying to accomplish. But throughout history, class society has corrupted movements for liberation, turning them into tools of elites striving to replace the old rulers with themselves, using the people as a battering ram against the old order.”

[Wayne Price. The Value of Radical Theory: An Anarchist Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. Oakland, California: AK Press. 2013. Kindle edition.]

“World capitalism is faced with deep and lengthy problems—economic stagnation and inequality, endless wars, and ecological catastrophe, not to mention oppressions involving gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation, and so on. In response, many radicals have shown interest in Karl Marx’s economic analysis of capitalism. This includes anarchists who are looking for a theoretical basis for their opposition to the system, even while they reject the authoritarianism of the Marxist movement and the (past and present) Marxist states. In various writings, I have been among those trying to speak to this interest.…

“Over the years, a few anarchists have denounced me as ‘really’ being a Marxist rather than a trueblue anarchist, because I value certain aspects of Marxism, especially its economic theories. This is even though I have clearly stated my opposition to Marx’s program of a ‘workers’ state’, nationalization and centralization of the economy, electoral party-building, etc. I have written of my opposition to all the ‘Marxist’ states, regarding them as state-capitalist, to Marx’s determinism, and, indeed, to Marxism as a total worldview. ‘Wayne Price also highlights the serious limitations of Marx’s politics.’

“I regard myself as in the broad, mainstream, tradition of revolutionary, class-struggle, anarchist-socialism …. However, I do not really care whether others see me as an “orthodox anarchist,” whatever that would be. I have long since lost interest in being orthodox in anyone’s eyes. Of course, I am aware that I am imperfect and—I hope—I am capable of learning from criticism.…

“There is also a minority tradition within Marxism which interprets it in a radically democratic, anti-statist, humanistic, and proletarian manner. Such views were held by William Morris, Rosa Luxemburg, C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, Erich Fromm, Paul Mattick, and others. I would not argue that these libertarian (autonomous) Marxists were ‘correct’ in their interpretation of Marx, as compared with the authoritarian mainstream of Marxism. I only note that some radicals found it possible to combine Marxist economic theory with politics which were very close to anarchism.”

[Wayne Price. In Defense of the Anarchist Use of Marx’s Economic Theory: Anarchist Views of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Pages 3-4.]

“The current world-wide revival of anarchism is premised on the decline of Marxism. Yet there remains a strand of Marxism (libertarian or autonomist Marxism) to which anarchists often feel close and whose followers often express a closeness to anarchism. Its libertarian-democratic, humanist, and anti-statist qualities permit anarchists to use valuable aspects of Marxism (such as the economic analysis or the theory of class struggle). Yet it still contains the main weaknesses of Marxism. And in certain ways it has the same weaknesses of much of anarchism, rather than being an alternative. This version of Marxism has much to offer anarchists but remains fundamentally flawed, as I will argue.…

“The attempts of the libertarian Marxists to shake free of Marxist automaticity (as I shall refer to it) have not been fully successful. They cannot be fully successful, given that it is not a misinterpretation of Marxism, but is a central part of [Karl] Marx’s Marxism. The whole point of Capital is that socialism must happen. But you can read volumes of Marx’s writings (and I have) without finding any statement of why socialism is good or worth striving for. However, Marx makes plenty of criticisms of the utopians and anarchists for raising moral reasons in support of socialism.”

[Wayne Price, “Libertarian Marxism’s Relation to Anarchism.” The Utopian. Volume 4, August 2004. Pages 73-80.]

“Anarchism has a different relationship to its ‘founding fathers’ than does Marxism. Marxists are, well, Marxists; also Leninists, Trotskyists, Maoists, etc. Anarchists are not Bakuninists, Kropotkinists, nor Goldmanites. Anarchism is more of a collective product. For example, that [Mikhail] Bakunin had a penchant for imagining elitist, secret conspiratorial societies is true enough, but this soon dropped out of the movement. Instead, many of today’s anarchists are for democratic federations of revolutionary anarchists, which openly participate in broader movements (e.g., ‘neo-platformism’ or ‘especifismo’).” [Wayne Price. In Defense of Bakunin and Anarchism: Responses to Herb Gamberg’s Attacks on Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2014. Page 3.]

“… if anything was central to Marx’s view of capitalism, it was his concept of the working class and its class struggle. And the most important overlap between Marxism and revolutionary, class-struggle, anarchism is their joint belief in the importance of the workers’ class struggle, together with the workers’ potential allies among all the oppressed. These are the people who have the potential to make revolutions which will save the world …. It is not inevitable that such revolutions will happen, before capitalism causes economic collapse, ecological catastrophe, and/or nuclear war. But Marx demonstrated that there are forces pushing in that direction in the very operation of capitalism. Will they succeed in time? We do not know. It is a matter of commitment, not of absolute knowledge.” [Wayne Price. The Marxist Paradox: An Anarchist Critique. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2013. Page 10.]

“Why … do we revolutionary anarchists call ourselves class struggle anarchists? My friend offered a partial explanation: It is not controversial on the left to call ourselves feminists or antiracists. Even liberals do. Some sort of ecological thinking or environmentalism is accepted by almost everyone but the far right. But a belief in a class-against-class perspective is held by only a minority. To be sure, there are many people who are for unions. Right now John Edwards is running for U.S. president on a program of supporting unions and fighting poverty. Yet his program is the opposite of class struggle. It is to get the workers to support his capitalist party.

“Similarly, Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (and far from the worst of union officials), makes coalitions with business. He has written, ‘Employees and employers need organizations that solve problems, not create them.’ This is not the same as, ‘The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working class themselves’ (the first clause of the Rules of the First International, written by Marx and loved by revolutionary anarchists). By calling ourselves class struggle anarchists, we make a point about who we are for…and who we are against.

“Class struggle anarchism continues the tradtions of communist anarchism and anarchosyndicalism, and overlaps with libertarian (autonomist) Marxism, such as council communism. In his overview of current British anarchism, Benjamin Franks writes, ‘The organizations identified under the heading of “class struggle anarchism” include those that identify themselves as such, as well as those from autonomist marxist and situationist-inspired traditions.’”

[Wayne Price. What is Class Struggle Anarchism? Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2007. Page 4.]

“We class-struggle anarchists usually make a distinction between two types of organization. There are the large, popular, organizations, such as unions, community groups, or (in revolutionary periods) workers’ and/or neighborhood assemblies. These are heterogeneous, composed of people with many opinions. Then there are the narrower, politically-revolutionary, type of organization, formed around a set of ideas and goals. These are formed by the minority of the population which has come to see the need for revolution and wishes to spread its ideas among the as-yet-unrevolutionary majority. They include both anarchist federations and Leninist parties — the anarchist groups are not ‘parties’ because they do not aim to take power, either through elections or revolutions.” [Wayne Price. Insurrectional Anarchism vs. Class-Struggle Anarchism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Pages 5-6.]

“Class struggle anarchists see a central role for the working class, blue collar and white collar—and ‘pink collar’—the majority of the population, which includes all other oppressed groups, as well as non-waged members of the class such as the unemployed, workers’ children, and homemakers. Workers are not more morally oppressed than anyone else (such as the Deaf). But, strategically, workers have an enormous potential power. With our hands on the means of production, transportation, communication, and social services, our class could stop society in its tracks. We could start it up again on a new and better basis.” [Wayne Price. Revolutionary Class-Struggle Anarchism. Fordsburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books. 2008. Page 8.]

“From time to time you come across an article which seems to be attempting to synthesise these two bodies of thought, and so it was when I begin to read with interest ‘Libertarian Marxism’s Relation to Anarchism’ by Wayne Price but disappointment soon developed. This is not a critique of Wayne Price, (WP) or this particular article in isolation but a critique of the sort of argument that sees the two theories as distant cousins who have hardly met and therefore completely misunderstand one another rather than close relatives who often meet up to explore what they have in common. Unfortunately the type of argument produced by WP and worse has often been repeated by Anarchists and ‘Marxists’ alike.…

“The basis of WP argument is that there are two strands of ‘Marxism’, mainstream or orthodox and libertarian. The former is the bad guy, the latter is well intentioned but try as it may it cannot rehabilitate the offender from its authoritarianism and deterministic ways as these are inherent in the theory itself. It seems that the terms mainstream or orthodox are intended as another term for real and according to WP the main fault with this brand of ‘Marxism’ is it views history as a process of inevitability, it happens to people and socialism is the inevitable outcome of certain stages which society passes through.”

[Ricardo Monde, “‘Marxism’ and Anarchism.” The Libertarian Communist. Issue 22, spring 2013. Pages 20-22.]

“The organisational logic of insurrectional anarchism is different to the organisations we mentioned earlier concerning anarchosyndicalism. The organisational forms referred to here in a few words merit going into, something I cannot do now in the dimension of a conference. But such a way of organising would, in my opinion, remain simply something within the anarchist movement were it not also to realise relations beyond it, that is through the construction of external groups, external nuclei, also with informal characteristics. These groups should not be composed of anarchists alone, anyone who intends to struggle to reach given objectives, even circumscribed ones, could participate so long as they take a number of essential conditions into account.…

“… insurrectionalist anarchism must overcome one essential problem. It must go beyond a certain limit otherwise it will remain no more than the idea of insurrectionalist anarchism That is the comrades who have lived that insurrection of a personal nature we mentioned earlier, that illumination which produces an idea-force inside us in opposition to the chatter of opinion, and form affinity groups, enter into relationships with comrades from other places through an informal kind of structure, only realise a part of the work. At a certain point they must decide, must go beyond the demarcation line, take a step that it is not easy to turn back from. They must enter into a relationship with people that are not anarchists concerning a problem that is intermediate, circumscribed (such as, for example the destruction of the base in Comiso). No matter how fantastic or interesting this idea might have been it certainly wasn’t the realisation of anarchy. What would have happened if one had really managed to enter the base and destroy it? I don’t know. Probably nothing, possibly everything. I don’t know, no one can tell. But the beauty of realising the destructive event is not to be found in its possible consequences.…

“… I because power realises itself in physical space, anarchists’ relation to this is important. Of course insurrection is an individual fact and so in that place deep inside us, at night as we are about to go to sleep, we think ‘… well, in the last analysis things aren’t too bad’, one feels at peace with oneself and falls asleep. There, in that particular place inside us, that private space, we can move about as we please. But then we must transfer ourselves into the physical space of social reality. And physical space, when you think about it, is almost exclusively under the control of power. So, when we move about in this space we carry this value of insurrection with us, these revolutionary values, and measure them in a clash in which we are not the only ones present.…

“I believe … [the] revolutionary process is of an insurrectional nature. It does not have aims (and this is important) of a quantitative nature, because the destruction of an objective or the prevention of a project cannot be measured in quantitative terms. It sometimes happens that someone says to me; ‘But what results have we obtained?’ When something is done, people don’t even remember the anarchists afterwards. ‘Anarchists? Who are these anarchists? Monarchists? Are they these people who support the king?’ People don’t remember very well. But what does it matter? It is not us that they must remember, but their struggle, because the struggle is theirs, we are simply an opportunity in that struggle. We are something extra.”

[Alfredo M. Bonanno. The Anarchist Tension. Jean Weir, translator. Santa Cruz, California: Quiver Distro. 2006. Pages 26-30.]

“The proposal of a kind of intervention based on affinity groups and their coordination and aimed at creating the best conditions for mass insurrection often comes up against a brick wall even amongst the comrades who are interested in it. Many consider it to be out of date, valid at the end of the last century but decidedly out of fashion today. And that would be the case had the conditions of production, in particular the structure of the factory, stayed as they were a hundred and fifty years ago. The insurrectionalist project would undoubtedly be inappropriate were such structures and their corresponding organisations for trade union resistance still in existence. But these no longer exist, and the mentality that went with them has also disappeared. This mentality could be summed up by respect for one’s job, taking a pride in one’s work, having a career. This, along with the sense of belonging to a producer’s group in which to associate and resist and form trade union links which could even become the means for addressing more problematic forms of struggle such as sabotage, anti-fascist activity and so on, are all things of the past.” [Alfredo M. Bonanno. The Insurrectional Project. Jean Weir in collaboration with John Moore and Leigh Stracross, translators. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1998. Page 10.]

“If nobody can say in absolute that they are part of the real anarchist movement, that is due to the impossibility of pointing to legitimate situations of struggle or methodologies that are valid for everyone at all times. Even the thesis of armed insurrection that we are so often accused of, nevralgic point of any discussion on anarchist methodology, cannot be considered a winning horse at any cost. There can be no doubt that the clash with capital — as we have said many times — will not be pacific. Violence will be the midwife of the new society, it is necessary to be genuinely active against the organised terrorism of the State, trying in every possible way to denounce and contrast it; but all that cannot be considered a simple sacralization of the machine gun. Changing our tune, we have merely said that when such organisations emerge from popular struggles as a result of a process of radicalisation that has isolated them, making the struggles they produced regress, only then, and only on condition that the umbilical cord uniting them with the mass has not been cut, can these organisations be considered to belong to the real movement.” [Alfredo M. Bonanno. Fictitious Movement and Real Movement. Jean Weir, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1977. Pages 14-15.]

“… it isn’t possible to make an abstract criticism of a demonstration like Stop the City. Whoever doesn’t agree with it should set to work to organize another kind of demonstration where the problem of sitting down in front of the police doesn’t arise. This second kind of demonstration is structured in four phases: a) information; b) popular involvement; c) minority attack; d) generalized attack. The last two stages do not necessarily follow on from the first, and might not happen, but it’s indispensable that comrades prepare everything as if the latter are absolutely certain.” [Alfredo M. Bonanno. Stop the City? – From Information to Attack. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1984. Page 2.]

“Now the world is simmering with insurrectional deeds, and these are present before everyone’s eyes, there is no need to relate them here.

“For years we have been discussing affinity and how to relate to each other in tiny groups based on reciprocal knowledge (affinity rooted in the past) and on common projectuality (affinity based on hopes for the future). We have also discussed how to intervene in struggles with informal organisations and base nuclei capable of connecting our anarchist insurrectional action to people’s need to solve certain problems and so withstand the immediate effects of repression as far as possible.”

[Alfredo M. Bonanno. Apart from the Obvious Exceptions. Jean Weir, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1997. Page 4.]

“One of the nagging problems in covert demolitions is how to get the explosivie material into the target site. In some cases, this is as simple as putting it in a pocket and walking in. But most of the worthwhile targets have some sort of security screen in place. This can range from a cursory bag inspection by a security guard to sophisticated X-ray scans or the use of a neutron vapor analysis (NVA) explosives ‘sniffer.’ Very ingenious means have been devised to defeat or avoid these defensive measures. A list of possible techniques, materials, and approaches follows [in the book].” [David Harber. The Anarchist Arsenal: Improvised Incendiary and Explosive Techniques. Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press. 1990. Page 94.]

“Reproducibility means bringing extra masks to the looting street party, letting the people you trust know how easy it is to X or Y against the police, showing people how easy it is to be as-close-toinvisible online, disseminating simple ways to scam corporations to help you get-by. Reproducibility guides us in our attacks against the State & Capital, but attacks will not carry the day for the creation of communism. This is often the critique directed at insurrectionary anarchists: that we bear no image of what a future communal way of life may hold and how it would be formed. Though any substantive reading of intelligent insurrectionary anarchist literature would demonstrate otherwise, our fellow travelers in the communization current do bear the productive notion how we can act in the here and now by way of communist measures ….

“Here we have demonstrated the suspended step of communization which makes communism possible without the proletarian seizure of political power and which makes of communism not a state of affairs but rather a process which proletarians actively engage in from the very beginning of revolutionary activity. Though our comrades in the communization current claim that now is the historical moment when communization is possible, insurrectionary anarchists have contended that the time has always been right.… [S]omething akin to communization as the way towards a communal way of life is not hard-encoded into any particular historical moment, rather it is has long been the way that oppressed peoples have responded to the State actively trying to control them, their way of life and as the means to be able to flee slavery and colonization, while making communal and autonomous life possible. Ex-slaves and their comrades would routinely raid plantations so that they could live outside of slave society and would often not make any political demands of the State. Those involved in this raids (appropriation as a communist measure) would be as much interested in disrupting and destroying slave society as much as they wanted to be able to live outside of it.” [An Ediciones Inéditos. The real death of politics. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 4-5.]

“Not only Anarchism, but any other real revolutionary movement is dragged into some forms of Nihilism. This understandably occurs especially in the formative stages as well as sometimes in the declining, depressive stages. Who can deny the historical importance of the wrecking of machinery by the Luddites (though today we are so clever that we tell them what they should have done instead)? There is no doubt that the assassination of czars and Russian governors effected, if nothing else, different treatment of political ‘criminals’—something which still has not been achieved in the ‘free’ United States. Without denying the truly revolutionary character of the Palestinian commandos, their newest weapon, hijacking, is surely an aberration in their struggle for recognition But the taking of hostages is nothing new in revolutionary history. The Paris Commune did it, as well as such partisans as the Titoists in Yugoslavia, the Maquis in France, and, before them, the Max-Hoelz Brigade in Weimar Germany.” [William Powell. The Anarchist Cookbook. New York: Barricade Books Inc. 1971. Page 10.]

“There are many popular misconceptions about anarchism, and because of them a great many people dismiss anarchists and anarchism out of hand.

“Misconceptions abound in the mass media, where the term ‘anarchy’ is commonly used as a synonym for ‘chaos,’ and where terrorists, no matter what their political beliefs or affiliations, are often referred to as ‘anarchists.’ As well, when anarchism is mentioned, it’s invariably presented as merely a particularly mindless form of youthful rebellion. These misconceptions are, of course, also widespread in the general public, which by and large allows the corporate media to do what passes for its thinking.”

[Keith McHenry with Chaz Bufe. The Anarchist Cookbook. Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press LLC. 2015. Page 1.]

“The practice and writings of various insurrectionary anarchists seemed to offer a way out of some of the problems of the US anarchist scene. Instead of debating the neutrality to technology or the origin of alienation, the insurrectionary anarchists drew on their own experience of practice on how to act and organize. This was a discussion that didn’t seem to be happening to a large extent in the US at the time. So we wanted to reintroduce some of the writings of the insurrectionary anarchists into the US. We also wanted to get away from a rather weak debate on class, which seemed to be caught between, on the one side, a reduced understanding of class and capitalism, which lacked a critique of work as separate from life and of the link between productive forms and social relations while celebrating worker self-management, and, on the other side, a rejection of class struggle.” [sasha k. Insurrectionary Practice and Capitalist Transformation: A discussion between The Batko Group and Sasha K. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2005. Page 2.]

“… propulsive utopia, the lifeblood of the real movement, cannot be found in books or even in the avant-garde theses of the elite philosophers that clock in to the factory of prewrapped ideas like clever shiftworkers.

“It feeds off a hidden but burning collective desire, increasing its flow in a thousand ways. Then suddenly you find it at the street corner. The form it takes is not usually staggering. It is often shy and unsure of itself and certainly does not conjure up a vision of lightning on the road to Damascus. But for anyone able to read between the lines of the real movement this and only this is the strong point of a phenomenon that runs into a thousand rivulets, threatening to break up its unity in models worthy of a hasty gazetteer.

“Here and there, in the recent students’ and railway workers’ demonstrations in France, the slogan of great revolutions that we were resigned to seeing diluted for ever into parliamentary speeches and pub talk suddenly reappeared: Equality.

“The real movement is finding itself in a little path in the forest by pointing to a great utopian objective: go beyond rights to the full reality of the deed.

“A swallow does not mean spring, you might say. Correct. A banner, a thousand banners are only words cried to the winds and are often blown away by it. But words are not born inside stuffy libraries. When they correspond to the spirit of thousands of people they suddenly break into the collective consciousness that is the basis of the real movement. Then and only then do they abandon their symbolic purpose and become a simple covering over reality. They become the substance of a project that is latent but at the same time is powerfully operative.

“Today the macabre spectacle of equal rights is suffocating any desire that glances beyond the barrier of the ready-made. But the student movement’s refusal of politics is only a filter for the profound, utopian request for immediate, total liberation. Out with all schemers, in with freedom. Right. But when this freedom does not have a bodily content, when it becomes a covering over well (or badly) construed words, then it is no more than a new way of sealing up ideology.”

[Alfredo M. Bonanno. Propulsive Utopia. Jean Weir, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 4.]

“Something meaningful appears in the crossroads of rhythms between re-evoked facts, the time of writing and the time of fruition, that is, in the task freely taken on by the reader. One perceives a content which is something other than the single arguments, the ways of saying and the saying of ways. In letting oneself be struck by dissonance one is not illuminated, one does not fall prostrate on the road to Damascus but simply creates air around one’s thoughts, that is, one lets inadvertence enter the field of codification. The range of arguments itself opens the way to unpredictable unions that were not intended during the phase of writing, and were probably not problems as such even in the factual phase. Dissonance therefore acts like a catalyst for casual openings that cannot be controlled. Just one warning: do not let yourself get panicky about meaning. If dissonance is an integral part of harmony and constitutes the other outcome, one that is always foreseeable and even desirable, its free coagulation in processes of aleatory fruition produces something else, a rupture that is not easily amendable. May others respect the complete cycle in the reassuring riverbed of meaning, with which the water carriers quench our fears, but elsewhere. Here one is proposing a reading that is itself a risk: a chance, a journey open to other possibilities.” [Alfredo M. Bonanno. Dissonances. Jean Weir, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 3.]

“… my jaded taste seeks out the obscurer corners of the social relation, as if despite the distortion, I might come face to face with this spectre and be redeemed by it, and all this when death and release would have been so much cleaner. Is it tension before death, the for-human I mean? A card-turning tension then, which has caused me to write an Anarchist Book of the Dead. Yes. No.” [Frére Dupont. Species Being and Other Stories. Berkeley, California: Ardent Press. 2007. Page xix.]

“What the situationists rediscover is the unquantified, ever-present, spirit of revolt. Revolt is an essence which every human may access through their natural antagonism to those conditions in which they find themselves. This essence is never overcome by any defined historical form, perhaps because it is natural, static, magical.

“There is an innate capacity for revolt against conditions that is the preserve of human beings. Theirs is a revolt against nature, against second nature and every situation in which they find themselves. Human beings separate themselves from animals because they express dissatisfaction with their conditions. Revolt is theirs, it belongs to them between themselves, collectively, as a binding relation. The capacity for revolt is not in itself valued, it is not a will to communism, a rejection of injustice, a movement towards truth or understanding, or anything of that type—it is more like a primitive, hostile reaction, or reflex, to conditions which may be reverted to at any/every moment in history—the triggers for this reversion are of course unpredictable.

“The reason species being or (its synonym) revolt is exterior to any given relation is because we assume that the human species is naturally social, therefore its innate capacities are always to be thought of as surplus to any given expression of them. Capacity is never exhausted. People would revolt against communism as much as against capitalism, perhaps more so, as conditions would invite a reversion to negative response which would enable their society to respond to individuals more subtly. In this case, communism is not essence returning to itself at a higher level so much as an intensified register of negation (in other words, it is the establishment of a more near-at-hand reflexive response to the conditions of society/self).

“The wretchedness of people, their unhappiness even amongst the wealth they have accumulated is a ground for hope. Their revolt does not take the form ordinarily recognised as such but even so their capacity for negative and destructive reversion is never diminished. This quick responsiveness might be called the Kurtz reflex—it both drags circumstances backwards and establishes new territories. Historically, within capitalist society, the working class comes into conflict with capital because, as a mass of human beings, it is split between its commodification and its human essence… it is forced by capitalist circumstance to go one way when its essence would incline it towards another. It is the human essence that resists capital whilst it is the social relation that determines the form essence takes. Or, to put it another way, the human capacity for revolt is what revolts against capital because it is never included within the relation of exchange. However, it is the relation of exchange that finally determines the manner in which revolt is undertaken.”

[Frére Dupont. Species Being and Other Stories. Berkeley, California: Ardent Press. 2007. Pages 65-66.]

“Feminism, as a movement for improving the conditions of biologically born females, is not inclusive enough for those who face sex/gender discrimination, for example, biological males who identify as women, people who are marked as ‘woman’ by society but who do not self-identify as women, intersexed individuals, people who float back and forth, bi-gender folks, drag queens and kings, and all of the other gender anarchists who by their very existence confound dominant notions of what female/male, woman/man, and girl/boy mean. Gender anarchy, understood in this paper as the effort to dismantle common assumptions about gender and sex, starting with our own gender identities is an important strand of third-wave activism. Feminism is getting more and more queer every day.…

“… gender anarchy does not mean that gender no longer works, but that gender, as with administration, is contestable and should indeed by contested.…

“… The gender anarchist maintains that who she is is not defined by her gender nor should it define anyone else.…

“Like the radical feminists of the earlier second wave, this new generation of subversives and radicals are demanding that we ‘think wild,’ become gender anarchists, and use this new energy to raise a somnambulant PA [public administration] to a new and imaginative public enterprise.”

[Janet R. Hutchinson and Hollie S. Mann, “Gender Anarchy and the Future of Feminisms in Public Administration.” Administrative Theory & Praxis. Volume 28, number 3, September 2006. Pages 399-417.]

“Trans women experience corporeality in a unique way. While capital hopes to continue to use the female body as proletarian machine to reproduce labor power, trans women’s bodies cannot produce more workers and is constantly already viewed as denaturalized. Perhaps in valorizing this intolerability in reproduction, and willfully extending it to all forms of reproductive labor, we see the potentiality of human strike. Ways of extending this remain to be seen, but in this affront to capitalist-produced nature and matrices of heteronormativity which are crucial to the functioning of capitalism, we see the kinship between the human strike of trans women and the materialization of a non-reproductive, purely negative queer force. It seems that the trans woman too has no future, and thus through the building of this negative force might have a stake in wrecking everything and abolishing herself in the process. In any case, we do not have the answers that will render society inoperable, that will end the social reproduction of this world. Yet as trans women, we know that every strike against capital is a strike against the mechanisms of gender oppression, and that every strike against the gendered violence in our lives is a strike against the machinations of capital.…

“Trans people remain strangers and outcasts within much of the contemporary discourses of insurrectionary feminism. Essays about ‘male-bodied’ perpetrators of sexual assault and ‘socialized men and women’ seem to leave much to be analyzed about the ways in which trans people have historically related the functioning of gender systems and the development of capitalism as a system. It is in this context that we (discursively intervene with that which we might term insurrectionary trans-feminism, an analysis which (instinctively analyzes the ways in which trans holies relate to the legacy of capitalism and the possibilities of living communism and spreading anarchy. This is (distinctly *not* a plea for inclusion, not is it an articulation of identity politics, but rather an articulation of why we might be invested in insurrection and communization with those who share our desires and per haps a preliminary set of ideas on how our positionalities might be used in such processes. In order to imagine the possibilities of subversion, however, we must first recognize the historical relations of capitalism to the formulation of the trans subject.

“The relation between capitalism and the trans subject is a contentious one. While many theorists such as Leslie Feinberg have sought to piece together a universal, ahistorical narrative of trans people throughout history across the world, we see such a task as ultimately failing to take into account the precise economic and social conditions which gave rise to each specific instance of gender variance. Gender nonconformity is not a stable or coherent phenomenon which appears in history due to the same conditions, rather it contextually can have a multiplicity of meanings.”

[Some Deceptive Trannies. Towards an Insurrectionary Trans-feminism. Chicago, Illinois: Not Yr Cister Press. 2015. No pagination.]

“The weekend of Friday August 15ᵗʰ through August 17ᵗʰ marked the renewal of a specifically anarchist presence among people of color in the Northwest. The gathering took place in Portland, Oregon over a three-day period. Around twenty people of color from all over the region attended the gathering coming from as far away as Eugene and Bellingham. Olympia, Seattle and Portland were also represented at the event. The focus of the weekend was to define what an APOC (Anarchist People of Color) organization looks like, specifically in the context of the Northwest, and also to define what it means to be part of an APOC identity. Friday night was focused on a social event at a fellow APOCer’s house where folks could hang out with one another, eat food, and get to know everyone who would be part of the gathering. This was in sharp contrast to many other activist events that take place. The focus here instead was on building community and feeling comfortable around one another rather than insisting on immediately ‘getting down to business.’ Despite the amazing communitybuilding that happened that weekend, there was much business that had to be addressed.…

“One issue that came up at the gathering that will need to be discussed and analyzed further both in the Northwest and at a national level is the term APOC itself. What does it mean? What does the ‘A’ mean? How does this label make people of color feel? Some people prefer the terms ‘autonomous’ or ‘anti-authoritarian’ to ‘anarchist.’ The reasons for this are plenty and include issues of inclusivity and appearances. Many people of color in the U.S. today do not wish to be associated with what has become the stereotypical white North American anarchist movement that is less about community and more about creating a lifestyle out of anarchism. Because of these common notions of what anarchism is, many people of color feel that the term alienates us from the communities we come from. Furthermore, it was pointed out at the gathering that we shouldn’t feel obligated to define ourselves by our relationships to racism, colonialism, and imperialism, because all people of color have different relationships to these histories. In other words, all people of color are not the same and we all have our own complex pasts and stories. However, what all people of color do have in common is the fact that we are not white in a society that elevates whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, money, etc. above all else and defines everything in relation to these ‘norms.’ Because of this, there is common ground for us to work together around issues that affect people of color in particular such as immigration, access to healthcare, gentrification, sexual violence, gang presence, war in our communities, and the prison industrial complex.”

[Brooke Stepp, “Northwest Anarchist People of Color Gathering.” Intersections: A publication of Common Action. Volume 1, issue 1, October/November 2008. Page 2.]

“It is difficult to write about a topic like anarchism, which is already controversial enough, to people who are familiar with its theory and practice without being intensely judged and questioned about what is written. Not that questioning is wrong. It is necessary, but in my opinion, it is unproductive if it lacks respect for someone’s ideas, thorough thinking, reflection, and constructive feedback. That is why I ask that you, the reader, to please just read, think and reflect about what I am expressing here. It might not be a perfectly written composition but it is not meant to be one, it is simply my experience with anarchism.…

“… homogenization has unfortunately built boundaries that mark what kind of issues are of priority, what kind of actions are ‘revolutionary,’ the kind of workshops to be given at a conference and so on. It was difficult for me to feel connected to these anarchists; our realities and priorities had nothing in common. Anarchist literature circulating in the majority of anarchist groups today speaks mainly of European (and European descendants’) anarchists’ history and present. I’m sure that is not on purpose, yet the beginning of this trend led to the simplification of ideas, such as that of Europe being the ‘birthplace’ of anarchism and this information was used to simplify another idea, that supposedly anarchism later ‘reached’ Latin America in the mid-1800s. I saw how this was not questioned often or ever by mainstream anarchism. Was it never considered that other people, whose histories just never made it to books, could have been practicing anarchism?”

[Sara Ramirez Galindo, “Experiencing Anarchism.” Our Culture, Our Resistance: People of Color Speak Out on Anarchism, Race, Class and Gender. Volume One. Ernesto Aguilar, editor. Houston, Texas: Anarchist People of Color. 2004. Creative Commons. Pages 8-13.]

“In their attacks on my well-to-do childhood, white anarchists overlook some deep-rooted cultural differences. For instance, I grew up with a series of amahs [nursemaids]. In pre-1949 China (and in post-Revolution Hong Kong), Chinese parents rarely cared for their own young. Instead, they turned them over to amahs, who acted as wet nurses, babysitters and maids. Most amahs remained with the family until all the children were grown and continued to maintain close ties with their nurslings. For the poorer families, like that of my maternal grandfather who could not afford to hire a woman, the elder children took responsibility for the younger. In earlier times, the son was married off-at the age of two or three-to a preteenage girl whose role was more that of surrogate mother than wife.” [Victoria Law, “Culture Clashes Among American Anarchists” Our Culture, Our Resistance: People of Color Speak Out on Anarchism, Race, Class and Gender. Volume Two. Ernesto Aguilar, editor. Houston, Texas: Anarchist People of Color. 2004. Creative Commons. Pages 2-8.]

“What do we think we should mean by revolutionary solidarity then? The first aspect is that of seeing solidarity as the extension of the insurrectional social practice one is already carrying out within the class clash, i.e. as a direct demonstration of actions of attack against all the structures of power, large and small that are present in one’s own territory. And that is because these should to all effects be considered responsible for everything that happens in social reality, including therefore the criminalisation and arrest of comrades wherever they are. It would be short-sighted to reduce the question of repression against comrades to something strictly linked to the legal and police apparatus. The criminalisation and arrest of comrades should be seen in the context of the social struggle as a whole, precisely because these are always the hasty material means used by the State to discourage radicalisation everywhere. No matter how great or insignificant it might be, every act of repression belongs to the relations of the social struggle in course against the structures of dominion.

“The second aspect is that each revolutionary comrade should be defended on principle, irrespective of the accusations made against them by the State’s legal and police apparatus, in the first place because it is a question of snatching them from its clutches i.e. from the conditions of ‘hostage’ they have been reduced to. Moreover, it is also a question of not losing the occasion to intensify the attack against the ‘law’ intended as the regulating expression of all the relationships of power present in constituted society.

“The third aspect concerns the refusal to accept the logic of defence that is inherent in constitutional law, such as for example the problem of the ‘innocence’ or ‘guilt’ of the comrades involved, and that is because we have many good reasons for defending them and no one can justify the political opportunism of not doing so. We cannot and must not consider ourselves lawyers, but revolutionary anarchists at war against constituted social order an all fronts. We aim at radically destroying the latter from top to bottom, we are not interested in judging it as it does us. For this reason we consider any sentence made by the State vultures against proletarians in revolt, and all the more so if they are comrades, to be a sentence against ourselves and as such to be avenged with all the means we consider opportune, according to our disposition and personal inclinations.

“The fourth and final aspect concerns our attitude towards the arrested comrades, whom we continue to behave towards in the same way as those not in prison. That means that to revolutionary solidarity we always and in any case unite a radical critique. We can and do show solidarity with imprisoned comrades without for this espousing their ideas. Those who show solidarity to imprisoned comrades are not necessarily involved in their opinions and points of view, and the same thing goes for us as far as they are concerned. We actively support all imprisoned comrades in all and for all, but only up to the point where what we do for them does not come into contrast with or contradict our revolutionary insurrectionalist way of being. Ours is exclusively a relationship between social revolutionaries in revolt, not that of bartering positions. We do not sacrifice any part of ourselves, just as we do not expect others to do the same.

“We think of solidarity as a way of being accomplices, of taking reciprocal pleasure and in no way consider it a duty, a sacrifice for the ‘good and sacred cause,’ because it is our own cause, i.e. ourselves.

“Starting from these premises, of primary importance in the development of one’s anarchist insurrectionalist action, revolutionary solidarity takes on meaning as such, because we would show simple material support to any friend who ends up in prison.

“Revolutionary solidarity is an integral part of our very being as insurrectional anarchists. It is in this dimension that it should be demonstrated incessantly, precisely because it contributes to widening what we are already doing.”

[Pierleone Porcu in Daniela Carmignani, Pierleone Porcu, Aldo Perego, Alfredo M. Bonanno, and Massimo Passamani. Revolutionary Solidarity. Jean Weir, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1989–1994. Pages 4-5.]

“The idea of self-government implies assemblies, and always has: workers’ councils, town meetings, household cooperatives. We can summarize and synthesize this as follows:

“Neighborhood Assemblies

“Workplace Assemblies

“Household Assemblies

“An Association of Neighborhood Assemblies

“That’s it. That’s how we do it. This is a simple and elegant vision of how we can reorder our social lives. These social forms, in varying mixes and degrees, have been present in just about every revolt against oppressing classes from the dawn of hierarchical society.”

[James Herod. A Goal and Strategy for Anarchy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2008. Page 5.]

“The key problem in building a horizontal, nonhierarchical social order based on participatory, direct democracy has never been how to do this on the local level in one town meeting, workers council, or village assembly, but how to make decisions across such assemblies. Direct democracy is frequently dismissed precisely because people believe that it cannot work in larger territories. I don’t believe this is true, but it is true that it has never yet been done, as far as I know. And this is the challenge we face. Decision-making procedures are thus not secondary matters. Not at all. They are absolutely central, a core issue. Until we solve the problem of directly democratic decision making across territories we cannot establish a free society. It’s as stark as that.

“What are our options? First, let’s review how it is done presently in the capitalist so-called representative democracies. Simple. Individual votes are tallied across the state to elect representatives who then make the decisions. Most everyone realizes now, of course, that this is a sham, and has nothing to do with real democracy. It is a device ruling classes have used to stay in power. The rich are able, by and large, to control who runs for office and what they do after taking office. Besides, the ruling class is making all the big decisions behind the scenes, in order to perpetuate capitalism. Even parliaments controlled for years by a majority of socialists have not been able to unseat capitalist ruling classes.

“But what if there were no ruling class, but just our popular assemblies in our neighborhoods and workplaces? What then? Well, we could continue using the same procedure that bourgeois democracies did and elect representatives by tallying individual votes across the land. [Karl] Marx and [Friedrich] Engels believed that if there were no ruling class then there would be no problem with representatives, because they would not be serving the interests of the ruling class but those of the working class. A century and a half later we now know that this is not the case. A decision-making elite very rapidly turns into a bureaucracy which in turn rapidly turns into a new ruling class.

“There is another way to select representatives, however (other than picking them through general elections). Each assembly could choose a representative (and the custom among radicals has been to call them delegates, and more recently, spokespersons) and send these delegates to regional assemblies to make decisions. But here is where we start running into confusion, ambiguity, and disagreement.

“Traditionally, anarchists have justified relinquishing their decision-making power to delegates with the concepts of ‘mandate’ and ‘recall.’ …

“The idea of instant recall is also an illusion. For recall to work, the people back home would have to be following the discussion as closely as if they were there themselves. They would have to have detailed, current knowledge of the issues as they were unfolding in debates among delegates. Even if everyone back home were watching the conference live on television (an impossibility), in order to exercise recall they would have to convene themselves in their neighborhood assemblies and debate whether or not a delegate had deviated from the mandate far enough to warrant recall. But if they are going to do this, if they have this kind of intimate knowledge of the issues and this kind of communication system, they might as well be making the decisions themselves directly, without bothering to go through the hassle of setting up a conference of delegates. A moment’s reflection shows that the whole idea of recall is fallacious, but it has been repeated uncritically for decades by radicals.…

“Perhaps a clarification would be useful at this point. Direct democracy does not mean that every decision about everything is taken by everyone. That’s clearly impossible. The very idea is absurd. Decisions over huge areas of life, like most projects, particular jobs, or households, for example, will be made by those directly involved. Only decisions of general significance need be made by general assemblies. But the general assemblies will decide what these matters are, and what should concern them and what not. A better distinction therefore than policy/administrative is whether something is a matter that needs to be decided by the whole community or is a matter that can be left to sub-groups. Any social order will have a division of labor, with specialized tasks, where decision making is best left to those who are actually doing the task. The mistake is to think that decision making itself is a specialized task, for which we elect persons with a specialized skill to carry it out (politicians at present, or more generally, delegates, representatives, or spokespersons). This is a grave error, and leads inevitably to a hierarchical society.”

[James Herod. Making Decisions Amongst Assemblies. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Pages 3-5.]

“Occupations and Assemblies. Both practices have always been part of revolutionary movements. For example: during the Spanish Revolution factories and farms were occupied in key towns and provinces; during the French Revolution workers in Paris set up 48 assemblies, one for each section of the city. More recently, beginning in Chiapas in 1994, assemblies have been popping up everywhere, in Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Oaxaca, Greece, and just last year in Egypt, Spain, and finally in New York City.

“If we could extend these assemblies to expanded households of 200 or more people, to neighborhoods, and to workplaces, we would begin to organize ourselves socially in such a way as to be able to defeat capitalists.”

[James Herod. May Day Talk. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Pages 1-2.]

“By ‘Direct Democracy’ I mean decision-making in assemblies through face-to-face discussion, deliberation, and voting, and an association of such assemblies built up through negotiated agreements (pacts, treaties), not through federation (or confederation) using delegates. The term has also been widely used in recent years to refer to referendums and recalls, which is an unfortunate restriction and weakening of the concept, which originally referred to direct participatory democracy, as in a town meeting. I stick to the original meaning of the term.…

“… All activists who are in a position to do so (and are interested in direct democracy) should attempt to establish either a neighborhood assembly, a workplace assembly, or an extended household assembly (that is, the merging of small households, families, and individuals in a neighborhood to form larger units of 50-100 people). These are the social forms through which we will be able to defeat capitalists and build a new social world. This should take priority over other more common activities like setting up infoshops, protesting in the streets, feeding the poor, and even over building organizations of anarchists for the purposes of propaganda and agitation.…

“… Direct Democracy should be practiced in regional associations. A common structural form in many radical organizations (e.g., Students for a Democratic Society in the ‘[19]60s, and Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists today) is to have local member collectives or chapters which are bound together through an annual general assembly, which sets policy for the whole organization. I believe this structure should be abandoned. Instead, proposals should be discussed and voted on in each local collective, but with the votes being tallied across all collectives. Nefac has in fact invented a procedure for doing this, but they use it only for minor things. There could still be an annual general meeting. It’s just that it wouldn’t be a decision-making body.

“Through its reliance on the relationship between labour and capital, fortified by state-enforced protections for private property to facilitate this relationship, capitalism creates a natural dependency on wages for the vast majority. With the removal of ‘the commons’ during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the peasantry was transformed into a working-class majority that now must serve as both commodities and tools for those who own the means of production.

“While those of us born into the working-class majority have little or no choice but to submit to our ritualistic commodification, we are sometimes presented with degrees of options regarding how far we allow capitalists, landlords, corporations, and their politicians to dehumanize us as their tools.

“While we are forced into the labour market, for example, we can sometimes choose public jobs over private, therefore limiting the degree of exploitation. While we are forced to find housing, we may sometimes choose to live in communal situations with family or friends.

“One of the areas where total choice is allowed is in the business of Empire, particularly in the maintenance and proliferation of the modern US Empire. Although governments worldwide are using technological advances in robotics to replace human bodies in their military ranks, and thus lessen their dependence on the working class, there is still a heavy reliance on people to act as tools of war. In ‘all-volunteer’ militaries like that of the United States’, ‘willingness’ is still a crucial component to the mission.”

[Colin Jenkins. Gangsters for Capitalism: Why the US Working Class Enlists. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 3.]

“As a postmodernist anarchist, identity politics is important to me. Go back to Audre Lorde’s quote. Every time I hear someone talk about my people as if we are just some ‘working class’ or ‘proletariat’ I wanna get as far away from that person or group as possible, anarchist, Marxist, whatever. As a postmodernist anarchist I also find my people’s experience the font from which we will find our way to liberation and power. That’s what I get from being the insurrection of subjugated knowledges. My nationalism gave me that kind of pride because it was such a rejection of White thinking or at least a decentering of the primacy of white thought, capitalist, socialist, whatever. I say this to say that folks outside of our experience need to respect that they aint got no monopoly on revolutionary thinking and dam sure aint got none on revolutionary practice. It is easy to sit back and intellectualize about our nationalism from the modernist, eurocentric framework of rational, scientific, materialist models. While one does that, it is our nationalism which constantly rally our people come together, remember our history, love ourselves, dream on and fight back. Black anarchists and anti-authoritarian revolutionaries understand the limitations of nationalism in terms of its historical sexism, hierarchy, or its modernist trappings in general. But we also recognize anarchism modernist trappings in the form of American racist privilege when it comes to people of color.” [Ashanti Alston, “Beyond Nationalism, but not without it.” Black Anarchism: A Reader. Portland, Oregon: Black Rose Anarchist Federation. 2016. Pages 72-75.]

“… let’s get into the subject of the talk, definitely we have to say that when mention is made of so-called ‘illegal Anarchism,’ really as a rule what is being referred to is insurrectionary Anarchism, to a set of Anarchist strategies implemented principally in France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States during the last two decades of the 19ᵗʰ Century and the first three decades of the last. This particular period in our history, that in reality covers a little more, seeing that declarations of insurrection have been collected from the Congress of Madrid [Spain] of 1874 and the so-called ‘retaliations’ — without doubt suggests that this period served as defining moment for the birth of this false dichotomy of which we spoke of before of ‘legalistic Anarchism’ vs ‘illegal Anarchism.’” [Gustavo Rodriguez. Illegal Anarchism: The false dichotomy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2011. Page 3.]

“Telekommunisten [MP3 audio file] had been used as a derogatory term for Germany’s former state telephone company, Deutsche Telekom, which is now a private transnational corporation whose ‘TMobile’ brand is known worldwide. The usage of communist here is intended to cast the telephone company as a monolithic, authoritarian, and bureaucratic behemoth. This is a completely different understanding to the positive use of the term as an engagement in class conflict towards the goal of a free society without economic classes, where people produce and share as equals, a society with no property and no state, that produces not for profit, but for social value. In this way, we are not simply a collective of worker-agitators toiling in the sphere of telecommunications. Telekommunisten promotes the notion of a distributed communism: a communism at a distance, a Tele-communism. A venture commune is not bound to one physical location where it can be isolated and confined. Similar in topology to a peer-to-peer network, Telekommunisten intends to be decentralized, with only minimal coordination required amongst its international community of producer-owners.” [Dmytri Kleiner. The Telekommunist Manifesto. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Institute of Network Cultures. 2010. Page 5.]

“This publication is intended as a summary of the positions that motivate the Telekommunisten project, based on an exploration of class conflict in the age of international telecommunications, global migration, and the emergence of the information economy. The goal of this text is to introduce the political motivations of Telekommunisten, including a sketch of the basic theoretical framework in which it is rooted. Through two interrelated sections, ‘Peer-to-Peer Communism vs. The Client-Server Capitalist State’ and ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Free Culture,’ the Manifesto covers the political economy of network topologies and cultural production respectively. ‘Peer-to-Peer Communism vs. The Client-Server Capitalist State’ focuses on the commercialization of the internet and the emergence of networked distributed production. It proposes a new form of organization as a vehicle for class struggle: venture communism. The section ends with the famous program laid out by [Karl] Marx and [Friedrich] Engels in their Communist Manifesto, adapted into a Manifesto for a networked society.” [Dmytri Kleiner. The Telekommunist Manifesto. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Institute of Network Cultures. 2010. Page 7.]

“… it might be perhaps a good point of departure to confess my earlier position and explain my current position. We can use the names of the collectives I was involved with to distinguish between then and now. I was then part of a collective called Idiosyntactix, and now am part of a collective called Telekommunisten.

“With Idiosyntactix I participated in many radical campaigns and organisations, including Tao Communications, IndyMedia, Reclaim the Streets, and many others. I believed that I was a member of a movement that was poised to imminently overthrow capitalism and create a new society. My politics were basic mixed-bag infoshop anarchism 101, with some cranky nuances drawn from various sources and even a taste for conspiracy, and though far-left on most topics, I held a libertarian enthusiasm for the Internet, along the lines of what Richard Barbrook would critique as ‘The California Ideology.’ …

“… The environmental footprint and social aspects of communications technologies is far too often overlooked, and therefore must be confronted. Telekommunisten was founded to confront these issues in theory and artistic practice, and I definitely share your [Matt Wilson’s] hope for the future. I would emphasise the costs, more than the use, so I hope for a future where the social and environmental costs of technology significantly reduced and subjected to much greater scrutiny, every step of the way. In my view, our best hope for achieving that is to build a society that produces and shares for social value, and not profit.”

[Dmytri Kleiner in Matt Wilson and Dmytri Kleiner, “Luddite Cybercommunism: An email exchange.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 21, number 1, spring–summer 2013. Pages 73-84.]

“The Miscommunication Technologies artworks by Telekommunisten illustrate some of the real-world challenges faced by anyone or any group that would like to challenge the dominance of capitalist models of production. Miscommunication Technologies take a lighthearted approach to an intractable reality: Capitalism is not only the system by which maximum value is extracted from social production; it is also the current global system that, in its unsatisfactory yet somewhat reliable manner, provides vital services we depend on every day. Any challenge to capitalist hegemony must be prepared to provide for the same social needs, which will persist in any system.” [Baruch Gottlieb and Dmytri Kleiner, “OCTO or How the Net was Won.” Interactions. Volume 23, number 2, March–April 2016. Pages 33-35.]

“Critical cartography is a methodology and pedagogy that begins from the premise that maps are embodiments of power. It advocates utopian possibilities for other mapping practices, providing tools for communities to spatially illustrate their struggles whilst reconstituting social bonds through collective knowledge production.…

“Critical cartography as a methodology, and pedagogical methods involving alternative mapping practices, have become increasingly prominent over the last two decades, particularly in human geography literatures, but also intersecting with a range of fields including education … and art theory …. This interdisciplinary paper aims to explore the potential to use critical cartography as a participatory pedagogical method for working with anarchistic groups and autonomous social movements, defined as groups that organize anti-hierarchically, are independent from traditional political parties and trade unions, and are self-managed and oriented towards the transformation of everyday life, rather than appealing to reform from above …. They operate in and through utopian spaces such as direct action protests, occupied protest sites, autonomous social centres and squatted buildings.”

[Rhiannon Firth, “Critical cartography as anarchist pedagogy? Ideas for praxis inspired by the 56a infoshop map archive.” Interface: a journal for and about social movements. Volume 6, number 1, May 2014. Pages 156-184.]

“This article is situated within … ongoing debates regarding the ‘participatory turn’ within the field of development, and it seeks to widen the existing theoretical and practical knowledge on this matter. Thus, the aim of the article is twofold. First, it suggests anarchism as a theoretical framework for engaging with what participatory development ought to achieve. Anarchism is relevant to these debates because—like participatory development and post-development—it originated as a critique of authoritarian and hierarchical structures of domination. The argument I wish to make here is that although the critical development literature often addresses issues and concepts that are pivotal to anarchist theory, connections between development theory and anarchism are largely ignored.” [Navé Wald, “Anarchist Participatory Development: A Possible New Framework?” Development and Change. Volume 46, number 4, July 2014. Pages 618-643.]

“Is there a developed, systematic body of thought on anarchism that is of African origin? Because anarchism as a way of life is in large measure indigenous in Africa, it seems almost certain that Africans had, at one time or another, formulated creative ideas on this way of organizing society. But any such ideas were almost certainly never recorded in written form. It is not surprising then, that many ideas were not preserved. Much of the existing literature on African communalism and traditional African societies is based on the latter day works and writings of European anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, sociologists and, more recently, their African counterparts. Nonetheless, these works and the ideas in them are fragmented and disjointed with regard to anarchist concepts and principles.

“The different strands of advanced, nonacademic African thought — from the time of colonial rule to the post-independence period — on the matters of socialism, revolution, and colonialism, are not so fragmented. For instance, in the euphoria that attended Nigeria’s independence in 1960, both the Eastern and Western regional governments enunciated a program of farm settlements designed, among other things, to: a) extend the frontiers of freedom and initiative which the average farmer brought to bear on his work; b) free farming and agricultural production from drudgery; and c) lay the foundation for the emergence of agro-allied, medium-scale industries.

“The program, a pet idea of the radical, left-leaning faction of Nigeria’s emergent local ruling class — for whom independence meant more than an opportunity for self-government — was modeled on the popular Israeli Kibbutz system and was intended to recreate the traditional African communal way of living, complete with its features of equality and freedom. Under the arrangement, farmers lived with their families in collectives and shared in common the means of production, including farming tools and implements, as well as utilities and infrastructure. Social produce was distributed equally among the farmers and their families, and the surplus was exchanged through the farmers’ cooperatives.

“The ultimate decision regarding what to plant lay with the farmer or group.

“Scattered in selected villages and communities, the settlements were efficient and made tremendous increases in production, while they lasted. Soon, however, the egalitarian principles that informed the original program were eroded through bureaucratic bottlenecks and corruption; and the outbreak of the Nigerian civil war in 1967 finally spelled the collapse of the experiment.

“Similar anarchic elements are discernible to a lesser degree in Muammar Gadhafi’s famous ‘Green Book,’ which contains the so-called Third Universal Theory. The concept of jamarrhiriyah — people’s collectives rooted in the countryside, making decisions in all matters concerning themselves — seems quite fascinating on paper. In practice, the proposals that Ghadafi set out were generally followed more in the breach than in practice.”

[Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariwey. African Anarchism: The History of A Movement. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2001. Pages 36-37.]

“When it was suggested that I write an article on anarchist criticism, my immediate reaction was to remark that there isn’t really any such thing as an anarchist criticism, in the way that there is a corpus of Marxist criticism, though there are critics who are anarchists and whose anarchism inevitably influences the way they write about literature and other arts.

“There could only be an anarchist criticism if there were an anarchist orthodoxy, a body of dogma which we all accepted, and which could serve as the basis for establishing critical rules. This is what happens among the Marxists.…

“Yet one can perhaps sketch out a general area of opinion which anarchist critics are likely to share. To begin with, they are concerned with social transformation—otherwise they would not be anarchists. But they also recognize the importance, even to social transformation, of the free individual insight, so that they never subordinate themselves to party dogma.”

[George Woodcock, “The Anarchist Critic.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 23, number 1, 2015. Pages 106-110.]

“The best way, then, of understanding the Guild Socialist attitude is to see, first, what are the fundamental assumptions about Society which the Guildsman makes; secondly, how he visualises the situation with wrhich the industrialised communities of Europe, America and Australasia are at present confronted; and thirdly, what are the forces and institutions in whose development he believes that the solution of the problem principally lies. A correct appreciation of these points will clear the way for a constructive exposition of Guild Socialist proposals.

“Guildsmen assume that the essential social values are human values, and that Society is to be regarded as a complex of associations held together by the wills of their members, whose well-being is its purpose. They assume further that it is not enough that the forms of government should have the passive or ‘implied’ consent of the governed, but that the Society will be in health only if it is in the full sense democratic and self-governing, which implies not only that all the citizens should have a ‘right’ to influence its policy if they so desire, but that the greatest possible opportunity should be afforded for every citizen actually to exercise this right. In other words, the Guild Socialist conception of democracy, which it assumes to be good, involves an active and not merely a passive citizenship on the part of the members. Moreover, and this is perhaps the most vital and significant assumption of all, it regards this democratic principle as applying, not only or mainly to some special sphere of social action known as ‘politics,’ but to any and every form of social action, and, in especial, to industrial and economic fully as much as to political affairs.

“In calling these the fundamental assumptions of Guild Socialism, I do not mean to imply that they are altogether beyond the province of argument. They can indeed be sustained by arguments of obvious force; for it seems clear enough that only a community which is self-governing in this complete sense, over the whole length and breadth of its activities, can hope to call out what is best in its members, or to give them that maximum opportunity for personal and social selfexpression which is requisite to real freedom. But such arguments as this, by which the assumptions stated above may be sustained and reinforced, really depend for their appeal upon the same considerations, and are, in the last resort, different ways of stating the same fundamental position. The essence of the Guild Socialist attitude lies in the belief that Society ought to be so organised as to afford the greatest possible opportunity for individual and collective self-expression to all its members, and that this involves and implies the extension of positive self-government through all its parts.”

[G. D. H. Cole. Guild Socialism Re-Stated. London: Leonard Parsons. 1920. Pages 11-13.]

“State Sovereignty is the theoretical equivalent of Collectivist practice: Guild Socialism, in its turn, must face anew the problem of ultimate social obligation, and must work out for itself a new theory.

“I do not deny, as indeed, no one can deny if he desires to call himself either National Guildsman or Guild Socialist, that industry is not everything., and that industrial democracy cannot be truly national unless it is responsible in some sense to the community as a whole. What I do most emphatically deny is that this ultimate court of appeal is the State, in any sense in which the term is ordinarily understood. Of course, if by ‘State’ is meant merely any ultimate body, there is no more to be said: in this sense everyone who is not an Anarchist is an advocate of State Sovereignty. But if the sovereignty of the State means the sovereignty lof Parliament with its subordinate local bodies, then I maintain that it is utterly inconsistent with the principle on which Guild Socialism rests.”

[G. D. H. Cole. Self-Government in Industry. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 1918. Page 84.]

“Co-operation remained its faith; but Co-operation no longer meant mutual trading or the establishment of self-governing workshops, or even a mass industrial movement to supersede competition and exploitation and put national ‘Guilds’ based on the Trade Unions in their place. [Robert] Owen’s new doctrine was that only the converted who had thoroughly received the Cooperative gospel were fit to enter into the inheritance of the ‘New Moral World’; and accordingly the emphasis was on the process of individual conversion and the gathering of the faithful into little local societies which stood ready to contribute their quotas towards the establishment of the ‘Villages of Co-operation’ planned by the national leaders of the Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists.” [G. D. H. Cole. A Century of Co-operation. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1944. Pages 32-33.]

“Bolsheviks, Syndicalists, Marxian Industrialists and Communists not merely claim for proletarian organizations independence of the State ; they threaten to destroy it altogether. Right or wrong, they are a force, and their doctrines are a living international influence. At the same time Guild Socialists, inspired also by industrial and economic conditions, preach the doctrine of democratic self-government in industry and the transformation of the State by the influence of the functional principle. Their doctrine is far wider than industry, although it springs out of industrial conditions. It amounts in the last analysis to a complete Social Theory—to the Social Theory which I am putting forward in this book.” [G. D. H. Cole. Social Theory. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. 1920. Pages 10-11.]

“Syndicalism had no great hold in Europe outside the Latin countries, though it was of considerable influence for a time in Holland and in post-war Norway. In Great Britain it developed some activity during the years of industrial unrest before 1914, but was relegated to a position of secondary importance by the rise of Guild Socialism during the first world war. The Guild Socialists echoed many of the Syndicalist arguments, without going to the same lengths of opposition to the State, which most of them wished to keep, in democratised form, as an agency of general government side by side with the Guilds. But, while highly critical of the Labour Party for its reformism, the Guild Socialists never fully endorsed the essential localism of the continental Syndicalist movement. This was largely because in Great Britain the Trade Unions were firmly organised on a national basis, and national was rapidly replacing local collective bargaining. The Guild Socialists as a rule took this industrial centralisation for granted, and aimed at establishing national guilds based on the national Trade Unions rather than local communes such as the French, Italian, and Spanish Syndicalists had chiefly in mind. Despite the presence of a small group round Prince Peter Kropotkin, who lived in England, British Anarchism was very weak and had no influence at all in Trade Union circles, and the tradition of parliamentary government was very strongly entrenched. The Guild Socialists were accordingly rather critical of those definitely hostile to the institutions of parliamentary democracy and concentrated their propaganda on the need for extending democracy to the industrial sphere as well.” [G. D. H. Cole. Socialism and Fascism: 1931 – 1939. London: Macmillan and Company Limited. 1960. Pages 307-308.]

“Is there a man for conscience’ sake

“Won’t do his bit, and a’ that?

“The dirty hound, we’ll have him yet!

“We’ve got a Bill for a’ that.

“For a’ that and a’ that,

“His Christian heart and a’ that,

“The man, tho’ but a Socialist,

“Can form a four for a’ that.”

[Anonymous, “A Man’s a Man.” The Bolo Book. G. D. H. and Margaret Cole, editors. London: The Labour Publishing Company Ltd. 1921. Page 7.]

“[G. D. H.] Cole filled many intellectual roles throughout his career, such as a social theorist, sociologist, social historian, philosopher, policy thinker, political theory tutor to British politicians such as Harold Wilson and Hugh Gaitskell and, perhaps most famously, propagandist for various Labour Party-affiliated groups such as the Fabian Society, the ILP and the Socialist League. However, his most impressive accomplishment was his earliest: the construction of a theoretically coherent socialist alternative which was distinct from both Marxism and syndicalism. This system was termed ‘Guild Socialism’ and was outlined most effectively in his 1920 text Guild Socialism Re-Stated.” [Matt Dawson, “‘Autonomous Functions of All Countries, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Economic Anomie!’ Emile Durkheim’s Libertarian Socialist Critique.” Critical Sociology. Volume 39, number 5, September 2013. Pages 689-704.]

“To-day, the practical man remains an ally of the capitalist section of society because he can, by this alliance, practically fulfil his gospel of achievement—of material achievement, of fruitful work in concrete things. But it is our purpose to convince him that a far finer career of material achievement awaits him when the community is reorganised into its true industrial formation, when every effort of brain or muscle shall be definitely directed to economic production. We shall then see that practicality as a factor in the world’s work is by no means a monopoly of the present possessing classes; rather, that it is an element of our national genius and common to all classes. Unless we can prove the practicality of Guild Socialism, and so attract the practical man, we admit that we are preparing for a moral and material catastrophe.” [A. R. Orage. National Guilds: An Inquiry into the Wage System and the Way Out. London: G. Bell & Sons Ltd. 1914. Page 116.]

“Before we can profitably begin our study of Guild Socialism, it is desirable that we should present a conspectus of the existing organisation of the industrial factors. As its name implies, Guild Socialism is necessarily a work of democratic social reconstruction. It is democracy applied to industry. Herein it differs fundamentally from State Socialism, which leaves to the bureaucrat the task of organising the industrial army without regard to the democratic principle. The term ‘Guild’ implies voluntary organisation and democratic management. Historically considered, this is its true connotation. It is because of this tradition that we apply the word ‘Guild’ to that democratic industrial organisation which our inquiry into the wage system has persuaded us is necessary if the future of the British national as well as working community is to be ensured. We have seen how certain it is that if the mass of the population consciously accepts the labour commodity theory and accordingly sells itself for wages, the servile state becomes inevitable. That way lie despair and the denial of every ideal, every hope and every democratic expectation for the future. The future welfare of Great Britain is bound up in its present will-power and capacity so to reorganise itself that it can produce and distribute wealth relieved from the incubus of competitive wages, rent, interest and profits. As we have already proved, the first step is the abolition of the wage system, for it is by means of wages that rent, interest and profits are exacted. But a mere declaration that wages are abolished is obviously absurd, unless an effective and superior substitute for the wage system is forthcoming. That substitute, in its turn, depends upon the coherence of the new organisation. But we must not even begin to elaborate the main outlines of the new social structure until we have clearly realised the content and extent of our task.” [A. R. Orage. National Guilds: An Inquiry into the Wage System and the Way Out. London: G. Bell & Sons Ltd. 1914. Pages 122-123.]

“History has not been kind to Guild Socialism. The conditions which sustained the Guild idea during and immediately after the first world war largely disappeared in the changed circumstances of the inter-war period. The Guild movement took its place as a brief early-century interlude, a current isolated from the mainstream of British socialist development, to be recalled patronisingly or with derision to taste. It began to take on the air of a museum piece, its antique charm preserved by an occasional dusting, but deemed irrelevant to the needs of a modern socialism. Of course the very name ‘Guild’ enormously eased the path to the museum, where it could be arranged alongside such relics as William Morris, Hilaire Belloc, and the Arts and Crafts movement, sad monuments of protest against the inexorable logic of modernity. The Guild movement was labelled ‘a Romantic hangover,’ exhibiting ‘a kind of pristine, almost schoolboyish innocence.’” [Anthony W. Wright, “Guild Socialism Revisited.” Journal of Contemporary History. Volume 9, number 1, January 1974. Pages 165-180.]

“Among the most significant of … [the] theoretico-practical campaigns is that carried on by the advocates of guild socialism, and it is with the political theory of guild socialism that this paper is concerned, especially in its relation to the pluralistic theory of the state. The purpose in mind is neither to deny nor to assert the validity of the pluralist doctrine theoretical or practical, nor to pass any judgment as to whether there is, has been, or could or should be a pluralistic state—it is simply to show the relation between the political theory of guild socialism and the doctrine of political pluralism.” [Ellen Deborah Ellis, “Guild Socialism and Pluralism.” The American Political Science Review. Volume 17, number 4, November 1923. Pages 584-596.]

“The House of lndustry League (HOIL) was a Guild Socialist body active between 1936 and the late 1940s. It was the last organisation of significance in the classical tradition of British Guild Socialism, a point reinforced most clearly by the prominence in it of S.G. Hobson, one ofthe key figures in that tradition. The intention of this essay is to recover certain basic historical information about the HOIL, an intention made important by the unmerited obscurity that it has fallen into.” [Mike Tyldesley, “The House of lndustry League: Guild Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s.” Labour History Review. Volume 61, number 3, winter 1996. Pages 309-321.]

“From their arrival in the US in the 1880s until their exile in 1919, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were instrumental in creating vibrant anarchist counterpublics. Goldman was the best-known anarchist in America. Berkman, while less known outside of anarchist circles, was a stalwart figure in radical labor activism. But what does it mean to create and address a radical counterpublic? Who participated in these publics and what modes of constitution and address did they facilitate or require? …

“For purposes of my explorations of anarchist counterpublics, the following aspects are particularly relevant: publics are multiple, temporal sites of struggle, anchored in concrete material spaces, and capable of enhancing the lives of their participants through the world-making practices of political struggle.”

[Kathy E. Ferguson, “Anarchist Counterpublics.” New Political Science. Volume 32, number 2, June 2010. Pages 193-214.]

“We understand that not only do we not need these structures, we need to get rid of them?that the supermarket is not feeding us but starving us, of not just food but freedom and happiness. And then we might burn and loot it. Revolt is not abstract, it is intimately specific: authority affects our lives, and our wills assert themselves against it. This conflict within all hierarchal social relations is known increasingly to anarchists as social war. It is the tension present within all class societies to upset the precarious balance of power, and knock the elite from their pedestals. This includes not just class but race, gender, nationality, sexuality, and all the other categories they have invented as walls to keep us within.…

“The destruction of existing systems and structures is necessary for free individuals and communities to flourish. This freedom may come to be felt most clearly through the process of destructive social revolution itself. Projects which seek to escape capital and authority, to create community outside of it, like community gardens, squats, off-the-grid/back-to-the-land projects, etc, are useful to the extent that they contribute to supporting revolt. In other words, infoshops may have a lot to contribute to insurrections, but opening an infoshop doesn’t, by itself, bring the insurrection closer. Positive projects are necessary but incomplete as a revolutionary strategy.”

[Anonymous. On the Current Crisis & the Potential for Revolution. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 17.]

“… the fairly extensive discussions in the ‘old’ anarchist tradition of a full-blown participatory government in the form of a citizens’/workers’ participatory council system, to which I now turn.…

“… the council system as a ‘people’s utopia,’ qualitatively different from other familiar utopias in the tradition of political thought, resonates in [Peter] Kropotkin’s words, referring to the Paris Commune: ‘This fruitful idea was not the product of some one individual’s brain, of conceptions of some philosopher; it was born of the collective spirit, it sprang from the heart of a whole community’ …. It is perhaps not advantageous for the New Social Movements, as well as for post-anarchist activists and scholars, that this vision of a participatory citizens’ council system is, for the most part, missing from their discourse.”

[Shmuel Lederman, “Councils and Revolution: Participatory Democracy in Anarchist Thought and the New Social Movements.” Science & Society. Volume 79, number 2, April 2015. Pages 243-263.]

“… [I] offer … [a] point of departure: an anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist philosophy that I have classified as nihilist anarchism. The nihilist anarchist, like [Friedrich] Nietzsche’s passive nihilist, demonstrates ‘strength’ in that her ‘previous goals (“convictions,” articles of faith) have become incommensurate (for a faith generally expresses […] submission to […] authority)’ …. Where once constraint was thought to be exercised by the state, the contemporary anarchist finds this power to be manifested in a whole range of places, reducible only to the subject of the state-ment. But Nietzsche also described an ‘active nihilism’ and this problematizes the ‘lack of strength’ that nihilist anarchists may feel toward ‘oneself, [and] productively [toward] a goal, a why, a faith’ …. Consequently, the active nihilist creates her own values in life and leaves them uncoded – her ethical act is performed in silence.… My conclusion is that nihilist anarchism, as the tradition that lurks always beneath anarchism, maintains that all ethical acts are the ones that do not get reified by language – precisely, this is its meta-ethics.” [Duane Rousselle. Kropotkin is Dead: A Second Order Reading of Ethics in the Philosophies of Georges Bataille and Post-anarchism. M.A. thesis. The University of New Brunswick. Fredericton, New Brunswick. April, 2011. Pages 166-167.]

“The Anarcho-nihilism/anti-social imprints strength to my own words that are my ‘evil passions’ ….

“Condemned by ‘human’ laws (which are devoted to utilitarianism), the free spirit – the anarchonihilist, is tied to a small community, with a common ‘thread’: the informal ‘happening’ of events.…

“The Anarcho-nihilist incipient ‘crushes’ the overall structure of values and the alleged uniqueness of things, which break up into an ‘apparent world’, and in the advent against what we can ‘see’, against what is embodied in men.”

[Federico Buono. The Anarchist and Amoral Anti-Judicial Attitude. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2012. Pages 3-4.]

“Libertarian Socialists also had another name that may be useful to differentiate from it from its Socialist brethren, anarchism. If Libertarian Socialism is overly concerned with self-management, federations, and workingmen’s associations then anarchism may very well have been concerned with how to integrate the Russian innovations of nihilism. [Mikhail] Bakunin is the case in point. Revisionists, of the Libertarian Socialist stripe, would focus entirely on Bakunin’s positive agenda of arguing for collective action to achieve anarchy; freedom of press, speech and assembly; and the eventual voluntary associations that would federate to organize society, including the economy. They do not attend to his negative agenda of demolishing political institutions, political power, government in general, and the State. As Bakunin provided the Nihilists with a formative gift in his essay ‘Reaction in Germany’ (1842), he also received a gift from the practice of the Nihilist Dmitry Karakozov and his failed assassination attempt of the Tsar Alexandar II. Ten years later this nihilist practice (that was is full swing by this time) became the policy of the largest anarchist federation on the European Continent. This so called ‘propaganda by the deed’ is the primary historical vehicle by which we know anarchism (and which Libertarian Socialists spend much of their time apologizing for and distancing themselves from).”

[Aragorn! Nihilism, Anarchy, and the 21ˢᵗ century. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 16-17.]

“Anarchism and nihilism share a common antecedent. [Mikhail] Bakunin’s dictum ‘Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all life. The desire for destruction is also a creative desire.’ in 1842 sparked both movements. Nihilism’s cultural peak was in the 1860’s, although its activism continued almost to the early twentieth century. It is arguable that anarchists inherited ‘propaganda by the deed’ from the Russian nihilists. Nihilism’s theorists continued to be cited as precursors to the revolutionary activity in Russia until they were ‘disappeared’ well into the Bolshevik regime.”

“What does nihilism have to offer beyond a mere avocation of destruction? The nihilist position does not allow for the comforts of this world. Not only is God dead to a nihilist, but also everything that has taken God’s place; idealism, consciousness, reason, progress, the masses, culture, etc. Without the comforts of this metaphysical ‘place’ a strategic nihilist is free to drift unfettered by the consequences of her actions. ‘A nihilist is a person who does not bow down to any authority, who does not accept any principle on faith, however much that principle may be revered’ Philosophically much has resulted from the nihilist ideas on value, aesthetics and practice. Most notably in [Theodor] Adorno’s conception of Negative Dialectics, a principle which refuses any kind of affirmation or positivity, a principle of thorough-going negativity.”

[Aragorn! Nihilism, Anarchy, and the 21ˢᵗ century. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 20-21.]

“Anarcho-nihilism combines the propaganda of words with the propaganda of shootings, fire, dynamite. Its dynamics are forged on the anvil of actions where consciousness and experience meet in a never ending dance and not in the keyboards of the digital world of nothing.

“Therefore, the anarchist urban guerrilla has the possibility to carry anarchy from abstract theory to practice where our desires are armed and trigger our own reality.”

[Imprisoned members’ cell. Communization: The Senile Decay of Anarchy. Untorelli Press (location unknown). July, 2015. Page 11.]

“The text reflects on the emancipatory potential of the uprisings in Slovenia (2012?2013). The uprisings are understood as a local manifestation of the global phenomenon, recently seen all over the world, from Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Turkey, Greece, Spain, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Portugal, as well as Italy, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the USA. My contribution draws on one basic axiom, namely, that any serious reflection on politics necessarily involves a reflection on basic, radical equality among people, i.e. on politics of emancipation that embraces the egalitarian norm and is therefore non-statist, non-representable, and non-identity/non-communitarian.

“I understand the politics of emancipation in contrast to the classical conceptualization of politics (as governance) and to the widely accepted contemporary conceptualization (as a state or the activities of institutional forms). I therefore necessarily conceive of it outside of the framework which we nowadays seem to consider as self-evident, finite, and the best of all possibilities. Its realization is the national, representative/parliamentary/consensual, liberal-democratic state and all of its postulates in the framework of capitalist ideology. On the contrary, politics of emancipation can only exist as a space of universal thought, in processes of proclamation, declaration, and realization. Thought is universal when it addresses all, when it embraces all and anyone, and is realized in this address as power, as an act. I therefore understand politics of emancipation as an active thought-practice proclaimed and executed at the same time by its protagonist, activist, militant. It follows from the universal thought which dissolves all differences, rendering them irrelevant to the thought process. As emphasized by St. Paul, the most famous anti-philosopher, activist and apostle: ‘Truth is either militant or it is not!’…

“… In terms of ideology, this potential was expressed as loyalty to the classical emancipatory ideals of freedom and equality. Their basic guideline was the assumption of equality of anyone to anyone else, wherein politics emerges as a declaration of ‘the possibility of the impossible,’ as eternal persistence at the point of the impossible.”

[Lana Zdravković, “The Possibility of the Impossible: Emancipatory Potential of the Uprisings in Slovenia.” Synthesis Philosophica. Volume 20, number 2, January 2016. Pages 319-340.]

“… I will … critically interrogate the ontological foundations of anarchism itself, and the stability of its Manichean opposition between humanity and society on the one hand, and law and authority on the other. This conceptual schema depends, I suggest, upon an alternate order of law – one grounded in nature and science, rather than political sovereignty. Instead of this foundationalism, I propose what might be called an ontological anarchism, which unsettles all orders of law. I develop from this an anarchist, or more precisely post-anarchist, political and ethical project involving an ongoing critical contestation of legal authority.

“It should also be noted that I am interested in exploring an anarchism-beyond-anarchism, or what I have referred to elsewhere as post-anarchism. Here, ‘post’ does not indicate a break with the anarchist tradition, or imply that anarchism is somehow obsolete and has been surpassed.”

[Saul Newman, “Anarchism and Law: Towards a Post-Anarchist Ethics of Disobedience.” Griffith Law Review. Volume 21, number 2, 2012. Pages 307-329.]

“This recent turn in contemporary theory is a marked change from the earlier classic division between the political theory associated with liberal democracies and progressive or critical theory associated with various forms of socialism. However, what is generally absent from these discussions is any reflection on earlier calls for functionalist representation rooted in the anarchist and syndicalist traditions. This raises an interesting question: Is this absence because these more recent ideas about representation are substantively different from the anarchist tradition? Alternatively, is this an oversight that should be addressed to give us a clearer idea about the advantages and disadvantages of functional representation? …

“… anarchist and syndicalist traditions … questioned the primacy of the political and ultimately demanded functional representation. This earlier tradition asked why representation should be based on territory; what group memberships were most relevant for the individual; and how politics should be practised if class membership or economic function was considered most relevant to daily life. None of the recent literature in contemporary theory cited above discusses this earlier tradition.…

“… If we undermine the legitimacy of citizenship in favour of functional representation (be it class-based or rooted on some other form of identity) do we risk losing the ground for democratic political action? Arguably, it was by coming together as citizens and suspending our other differences in the twentieth century that people managed to keep their governments somewhat accountable.”

[Jason Royce Lindsey, “Functional Representation and Its Anarchist Origins.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 18, number 2, autumn–winter 2010. Pages 85-100.]

“… anarchist literary theory joins a larger anarchist critique of ideology: to the extent that we can speak of a ‘false consciousness,’ this falsehood consists in a.) the creation of relationships which are taken to be inescapably fixed (or, ontologically, the reduction of life’s possibilities to the actually existing) or b.) the attempt to escape from all relationship (the reduction of life’s reality to pure potentiality, unanchored to any actuality).…

“… [There is] what could be called the utopian dimension of anarchist literary theory: not in the sense of positing an abstract ideal without relation to an actual topos, but in the sense that we are always journeying from one topos to another, travelling into the future.”

[Jesse Cohn, “What is anarchist literary theory?” Anarchist Studies. Volume 15, number 2, autumn–winter 2007. Pages 115-131.]

“This article offers a synchronic and diachronic analysis of contemporary anarchist ideology, based on participant research on large-scale ideological expression in anarchist movement networks. I identify and discuss three major conceptual clusters which mark contemporary anarchism’s stable ideological core: (a) the construction of the concept of ‘domination’ and the active opposition to all its forms and systems, (b) the ethos of direct action as a primary mode of political engagement, both destructive and constructive, and (c) the open-ended, experimental approach to revolutionary visions and strategies, which endorses epistemological pluralism and is strongly grounded in present tense action. From a diachronic point of view, it is argued that these three elements are the product of network- and ideological convergence among ecological, feminist, anti-war and anti-neoliberal movements, associated with the multi-issue politics of alternative globalization and local grassroots politics. The re-emergence of anarchism thus highlights the continuity between movement networks, political culture and ideological articulation, and draws attention to important processes in the life-cycles of ideological formations.…

“… At the centre of this article is a synchronic analysis of contemporary anarchist ideology, which interprets the ideational framework expressed by widespread trends in the praxis and political language of anarchist activists.…

“Threaded through the synchronic analysis are elements of a diachronic account, which traces the sources of the present-day ideological configurations I discuss to transformative processes in social movement activity in recent decades.”

[Uri Gordon, “Anarchism reloaded.” Journal of Political Ideologies. Volume 12, issue 1, February 2007. Pages 29-48.]

“There might be a commitment to some version of individualism and/or community, but even these presuppositions need to be spelled out as a precursor to actual descriptions of communes, federations, syndicalism, mutual aid, cooperatives or whatever. This is to say that anarchism (like some feminisms and forms of green thought) is a system which proposes organizational answers to political questions. It is in this sense that we offer this paper as a contribution to the project of conjoining anarchism and critical management studies. Not anarchist organizing as a closed category, but certainly a theory of organization which is infused with anarchist ideas.” [Martin Parker, George Cheney, Valerie Fournier, and Chris Land, “The Question of Organization: A Manifesto for Alternatives.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, 2014. Pages 621-636.]

“… cooperativism … [is] the feature of social organization such as civic participation that helps facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit. Cooperativism in social capital in this sense is a resource of a group of people working together in order to achieve collective goals that could not be accomplished by individuals themselves. In addition, cooperativism can be embodied in the smallest and most basic of groups, the family, as well as the largest of all groups, the nation.” [S. Gayatri, J.T. Dizon, C.M. Rebancos and N.J.V.B. Querijero, “The Dimension of Cooperativism and Dairy Cattle Farming in Getasan Village, Semarang Regency, Central Java Province, Indonesia.” Journal of the Indonesian Tropical Animal Agriculture. Volume 36, number 2, June 2011. Pages 131-136.]

“Aligned against the small farmer organizations remained the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), still serving to pave the way for agribusiness. The Farm Bureau was much larger than the other organizations, due mainly to the side benefits it offered through the support of bankers. AFBF remained acceptable to corporate America because it was a big corporation run by a giant managerial bureaucracy far above its average members. The same was true of large agricultural cooperatives such as Sunkist and Farmland, seven of which were listed among the ‘top 500’ corporations. In the [19]70s, huge Midwestern dairy co-ops [coöperatives] were exposed giving enormous bribes to the Nixon administration. Business cooperativism ultimately served corporate interest.” [John Curl. For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America. Oakland, California: PM Press. 2009. Page 236.]

“The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives is the national grassroots membership organization for worker cooperatives. Our membership also includes democratic workplaces, cooperative developers and organizations that support worker cooperatives. We advance worker-owned, -managed, and -governed workplaces through cooperative education, advocacy and business development.” [Amy Johnson et al. Democracy at Work: U.S. Directory of Worker Cooperatives & Guide to Democratic Business Resources. Oakland, California: Democracy at Work Institute. 2015. Page 79.]

“Mass housing was … the only solution to the enormous programme of housing and re-housing that was required in the post-war years. Self-help, self-builds and co-ops were not considered a feasible solution. Also, certain housing legislation made it extremely difficult to construct them anyway. Local authorities had the monopoly on housing and wanted to keep it that way. The early housing pioneers had suggested co-operatives as a method of housing people in 1885. Housing pioneers such as Raymond Unwin, whose famous Tudor Walters report laid the foundations for the local authority landlordism system, were strong advocates of housing co-ops. Unwin only saw local authority landlordism as a short-term emergency solution at the turn of the last century not the all-encompassing monolith of local government it was to become.” [Michael Coates, “To Hell with Architecture: An Architecture of Anarchism.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 23, number 2, 2015. Pages 47-67.]

“We might also consider getting rid of loans as such. Even interest-free loans are still debts, which must be repaid. All wealth is socially created. If it were also socially controlled then communities could decide whether to finance a project or not, and absorb the loss if it didn’t pan out. In a cooperative anarchist society, loans, debt, and taxes could be dispensed with completely and forever.” [James Herod. Defeating Capitalists Quickly to Save the Earth. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Page 3.]

“The new cooperativism finds its historical roots in the social anarchist-influenced stream of self-determination and its suggestive potential for another world. The new cooperativism today is a bottom-up, grassroots-driven movement of autogestión [self-management] distinguished by five features:

[Marcelo Vieta, “The stream of self-determination and autogestión: Prefiguring alternative economic realities.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 14, number 4, November 2014. Pages 781-809.]

“What I call platform cooperativism is about democratic ownership models for the Internet. Third, I’ll outline … principles for labor platforms that are bringing fairness to work on labor platforms. I will conclude with reflections about possible next steps for this movement in the making.” [Trebor Scholz. Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy. New York: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. 2016. Page 2.]

“Today, we’re here at the New School in New York City for the Platform Cooperativism conference, which is bringing together a remarkable range of speakers on the theme of creating online platforms that are owned and operated by their users and workers. These two days feature speakers from a wide range of academic disciplines alongside people sharing their experiences of running co-ops and advocating for fair work in platform economies.…

“Some people say that co-operatives are slow, difficult, and have long meetings. Janelle [Orsi] thinks that the biggest challenge is actually to stop people from saying that. Legal issues, getting financing, creating governance structures are possible—we can figure these things out, she says. The main challenge is to build literacy over what is a cooperative and convince people that they’re possible.”

[Trebor Scholz and Katie Arthur, “What is Platform Cooperativism and Why is It Important?” MIT Center for Civic Media. November 13th, 2015. Web. Retrieved on February 25th, 2017.]

“10 Principles for Platform Cooperativism …

[Trebor Scholz. Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy. New York: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. 2016. Pages 18-20.]

“It was Trebor Scholz, Associate Professor of Culture and Media at the New School in New York City, who put the concept of platform cooperativism on the agenda. ‘Platform cooperativism,’ says Trebor, ‘is about cloning the technological heart of online platforms and puts it to work with a cooperative model, one that puts workers, owners, communities, and cities – in a kind of solidarity that leads to political power.’” [Thomas Dönnebrink and Ela Kagel. Platform Cooperativism: an international movement on the rise. Berlin, Germany: #PlatformCoopBerlin. 2016. Page 3.]

“Loomio’s developers also intentionally worked to subvert proprietary forms of communication through its co-operative structure and open source model. With a secondary goal of enlarging the ‘digital commons,’ the ideological struggle first initiated by Occupy found new enunciation in Loomio’s organizational politics and its software’s architectural design. The goal of creating ‘commonly held resources that benefit all’ … speaks to the fact that a dominant proportion of web-based platforms and services, as well as the infrastructure that sustain them, are owned and controlled by private companies and commercial interests. As a result, the contemporary digital landscape is one where users must trade their personal data like currency for access to most contemporary communication services and technologies …. In an explicit rejection of this trade-off—and much like Occupy’s primary goals, as well—Loomio’s co-operative and open source model aims to place resources back into the commons by shifting ownership from corporate control to user control.” [Sam Jackson and Kathleen M. Kuehn, “Open Source, Social Activism and ‘Necessary Trade-offs’ in the Digital Enclosure: A Case Study of Platform Cooperative, Loomio.org.” tripleC: Cognition, Communication, Co-operation. Volume 14, number 2, 2016. Creative Commons. Pages 413-427.]

“Capitalism is essentially competitive and, therefore, necessarily belligerent in character: hence a complete, an ideal moral life is an utter impossibility under it, but even the little of moral life which otherwise might be possible is lessened to one-half by official dogmas and espionage laws; if, then, the governments of churches and nations have any regard for the morality of their memberships and citizenships they will at once repeal them, and never enact others.

“The democracy which means freedom to learn the laws of the physical realm of nature and to interpret them into laws for the regulation of human life (a democracy which will secure to each one the longest and happiest life which, under the most favorable of conditions, would be within the range of possibilities for him) must wait until the competitive system of capitalism for the production and distribution of the necessities has been universally and completely supplanted by the co-operative system of socialism.…

“Among the signs of the times which unmistakably point to the great day of the happy consummation of the movement towards the proletarian revolution, and the glorious sky is full of them, is the fact that the world has recently learned from the great war that man must work out his own salvation without the least help from the gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion ….”

[William Montgomery Brown. Communism and Christianism: Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View. Galion, Ohio: Bradford-Brown Educational Company, Inc. 1923. Pages 47-48.]

“The narrow definition of piracy attempts to escape this conundrum, as it considers pirates only those sea robbers who carry no license by any legal authority, who target all ships, regardless of the national colors they fly, and who are ‘unwilling to be registered or corrupted by either money or office.’ …

“This book will mainly work with the narrow definition of piracy. In fact, the group of pirates on which it focuses not only excludes those being licensed by legal authority, but also those who operated from secure land bases. The reason for this is the particular attention given to the nomadic element of golden age piracy—a feature that asks for a special and unique analytical approach. Despite certain structural similarities stemming from their common profession, historical pirate communities like those of the British Channel, the Barbary Coast or the China Sea constitute fundamentally different social phenomena as their relations to the land, local communities and political authorities were much more clearly defined, even if great diversity existed within their respective modes of organization and activities.”

[Gabriel Kuhn. Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy. Oakland, California: PK Press. 2010. Pages 7-8.]

“In Life Under the Jolly Roger …, Gabriel Kuhn takes on the far flung sources regarding golden age piracy (primarily in the Caribbean at the end of the 17ᵗʰ century and beginning of the 18ᵗʰ) not in order to establish a definitive truth about them but to dispel myths, clarify what we can know for sure about the pirates and what realistic questions remain, and to elucidate what the pirate legacy might mean for people today who also see themselves as excluded by or at war with the developing global order.” [Peter Gelderloos. Life Under the Jolly Roger. Review piece. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 1.]

“… what he’s [Gabriel Kuhn’s] done with this book [Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy] is try to give us a balanced historical view of piracy (in a brief sense) in terms of what probably happened. But more important to this book is the use of the narrative of piracy to inspire us with stories for contemporary radical political theory and practice. And that’s the hook (sorry, pun intended and I might not be able to stop) — I mean there’s a lot there to be folded into fascinating and entertaining stories, allegories that give us hints at how we might change our world and ourselves.” [Deric Shannon. Life Under the Jolly Roger. Review piece. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 1.]

“Mutineers (Pirates) seek to create an open revolt during demonstrations/protests as well as other times not associated with traditonal protests …, That is, mutineers reject any reforms or ‘half-way’ measures common to most activist sound biles. They do not seek, to recruit, spin a particular message, orbring attention to some particular/Insular injustice. Open revolt is not concerned with ‘messaging’ the public but challenging specific authority in the street. While some activists shy away from the chaos of demonstrations, pirates thrive. Mutiny is not an abstract struggle but a skirmish played out in the real world.

“The open revolt is focused not on some abstract entity but on, a concrete enemy—Lawful Authority. Just as historical pirates attacked both commercial and military ships, so are we in revolt against capitalists and the concrete powers of the state. We have no target audience or message other than a complete revolt against authority. We, as anarchists, reject the legitimacy of cops or others who seek to restrain our autonomy. Pirates acknowledge that complete resistance to (and overthrow ot lawful authority), even if it is temporary, is our goal in any mutiny.”

[Cap’n Mayhem et al. Long Live Mutiny!: Pirate Tactics. Baltimore, Maryland: Firestarter Press. 2008. No pagination.]

“… revolutionary anarchists should openly advocate for our positions, even when in the minority, to clearly articulate the perspective that we offer. Our ideas of direct action, horizontal organizing, class struggle, and anti-capitalism should be openly discussed in the social movements as important strategic elements of gaining power for the social movement.…

“Our revolutionary anarchist ideals will find traction in social movements through our influence as members of the social movement with a clear vision of a new world and with the organizing skill of long-term militants. This means that, as anarchists we will teach our ideas to our companions in struggle by “doing and showing” much more than by “talking and explaining.” Active engagement in building the social movement, doing the necessary day-to-day work to exemplify a strong grassroots social movement member, and fighting on issues of survival for the exploited classes will grow our own influence.”

[Colin O’Malley, “Building a Revolutionary Anarchism.” Perspectives on Anarchism. Number 27, 2014. Pages 84-96.]

“Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists, it remains, for those with share this viewpoint, a beacon for future revolutionaries and a model to be emulated. Even for Trotskyists, who consider the Soviet Union and the East European ‘socialist’ regimes to have been either ‘degenerated’ or ‘deformed workers states’ and who believe that those that remain, in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, still are ‘workers states,’ the legacy of the Russian Revolution remains overwhelmingly positive, since they view Lenin, the Bolshevik Party, and the October Revolution as ideals that deserve to be emulated despite the problematic results. In contrast, for libertarians and anti-authoritarians, the outcome of the Russian Revolution was a disaster, or as anarchist Alexander Berkman put it, a tragedy. At the end of the civil war (roughly the middle of 1921), this tragedy involved: (1) the consolidation of a brutal, dishonest, and corrupt one-party dictatorship that was to evolve into one of the vilest regimes the world has ever seen; (2) the smothering of the tremendous libertarian potential that had burst into flames during various stages of the revolution, both before the seizure of state power by the Bolsheviks and afterward, in the mass popular resistance to the consolidation of Bolshevik rule; (3) the slaughter of millions of workers, soldiers, and peasants, along with tens of thousands of revolutionary fighters of all classes; (4) the transformation of the soviets, factory committees, and other organizations of popular democracy into the bureaucratic apparatus of the ‘Soviet’ state; and (5) the besmirching of the name and the corruption of the ideal of revolutionary socialism for decades afterward.” [Ron Tabor. On the occasion of its 100ᵗʰ anniversary: Explorations in the Russian Revolution, Part I. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 1-2.]

“… from an anarchist and libertarian socialist point of view, the soviets were by no means ideal. Specifically, they were hierarchical organizations. It is certainly true that they were nowhere nearly as hierarchical as were the organs of the Tsarist state or even the organizational structures of the socialist parties, but they were not models of libertarian organization either. They generally consisted of three layers. At the bottom were the delegates elected by the rank and file workers, soldiers, sailors, and peasants, along with huge numbers of observers who came and went, observing and participating in the proceedings for varying periods of time. Above them were members of the soviets’ executive committees, who were usually not elected at all but were chosen by the various socialist parties and groups to represent them (according to an agreed-upon quota) on the committees.” [Ron Tabor. Historical and Political Background, the February Revolution and the Soviets: Explorations in the Russian Revolution, Part II. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Page 11.]

“In a world that sees the conflagration of the Amazon, hurricanes with potential speeds of at least a half-category higher than the highest ever recorded— Category 5—are expected to pummel several coastal cities around the world. The Greenland ice cap will quickly go into terminal decline under such conditions, and lakes and relatively unarable land will dialectically appear in the far northern latitudes in place of the receding ice. In such a world, parts of Central America and Australia will experience dramatically more intense drought and the collapse of agricultural productivity; much of these two regions, the current home to over 60 million people, will simply be rendered uninhabitable. An increased average temperature of three degrees will likely contribute to the perennialization of drought in Indonesia and the dramatic melting of the Himalayan glaciers—which currently sustain half of the world’s total human population. Under such climatic conditions, up to fifty percent of all species currently living will be at risk of extinction.” [Javier Sethness, “Atmospheric Dialectics: A Critical Theory of Climate Change.” Perspectives on Anarchism. Volume 12, number 2, fall 2010. Pages 8-25.]

“… political cruelty does not seek to be included into the universality proposed by the history of Western capitalism and instead seeks to find the means of escaping from a universality that was never ours from the start. For those who would prefer reductive formulations, we could say that while the West continues its process of inclusion and expansion, our political-cruelty maintains its relation to the Outside.

“To our enemies who get off on finding contradictions that abound in this politics of cruelty we say to them ‘all the better!’ For them, whose desire is to be the intelligible subjects of globally integrated capital, these contradictions are mere impasses on their road to being exceptions to the rule. To our allies, who opt for a politics of cruelty, we say ‘savor these supposed contradictions!’ From the point of view of political-cruelty a contradiction simply means that we have a weapon with more than one side.”

[Hostis. 5 Theses on the Politics of Cruelty. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Pages 1-4.]

“This issue continues ‘Five Theses on the Politics of Cruelty,’ a restatement of the main features of our defense of ’the politics of cruelty’ in Hostis issue 1. Though it should go without saying, such cruelty is not meant to be directed at friends and neighbors. It is certainly not an excuse to act shitty to members of your crew, be abusive to a loving partner, or sow divisiveness of any kind. Our cruelty follows in the footsteps of Spike Lee, who replaces the self-appointed Reverend Harry Powell’s moralism in The Night of Hunter with Radio Raheem’s struggle to fight the power. In his telling of the battle between love and hate, Radio Raheem does not act as a false prophet telling us how good prevails over evil. Instead, Raheem tells us that he divides the world in two: love and hate. Those he loves, he loves; those he hates, he hates.” [Hostis. Introduction: Recognition and its Discontents. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Page 8.]

“Vengeance is at the top of our list. We want nothing short of complete revenge against the patriarchs who brought us into the terrible world, full retribution for all of the humiliating rituals of society, and the total satisfaction of seeing our enemies defeated. You inspire us by showing just how queer our violence can be, for which we proudly call you comrades-in-arms.

“In the first issue of our journal, we used Bash Back! as a cautionary tale in our defense of the politics of cruelty. Telling a modern version of the tale of Íkarus, we suggested that they could not help but fly too close to the sun and fell into the sea. We thought that they had tragically perished as a result. So you can imagine our elation at hearing that Bash Back! lives on underground – not with card-carrying members but according to the principles of an ‘Undying Passion for Criminality’ also mentioned in the first issue.”

[Hostis. A Cautious Reply. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2016. Page 1.]

“One of the most long-standing political forces promising such change is the ‘global justice movement’ (GJM), seen by many as potentially heralding ‘a new kind of revolution—a global revolution’ …. Embracing a wide assortment of activists—from socialists to Trotskyites and from greens to anarchists—this ‘movement of movements’ has captured the imagination of political commentators and scholars alike for over a decade. Two strands of activism within the GJM that have gained increasing visibility in recent years are anarchists, often touted as the ‘heart and soul’ of the movement …, and feminists, whose vibrant presence has also now been documented in some detail ….

“It is important to note that this label is contested and that many activists prefer to describe the ‘movement of movements’ in which they participate in as ‘anticapitalist,’ ‘antiglobalisation’ or ‘globalisation from below.’”

[Bice Maiguashca, “‘They’re Talkin’ bout a Revolution’: Feminism, Anarchism and the Politics of Social Change in the Global Justice Movement.” Feminist Review. Issue 106, February 2014. Pages 78-94.]

“Anarchists have been active in the movement for global justice since it began. We find them in Chiapas at the side of the Zapatistas soon after the insurrection of January 1, 1994. We find them in Geneva in May 1998, amongst members of the Peoples’ Global Action celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by shattering the windows of businesses emblematic of global capitalism. Nevertheless, it was not until the Battle of Seattle on November 30, 1999 that the anarchist presence at the heart of the movement was more widely recognised. The ‘affinity groups’ of the Direct Action Network (DAN) blocked access to the conference centre and, using tactics of non-violent civil disobedience, resisted assaults by the police. Approximately four hours after the first DAN action, members of a ‘Black Bloc,’ masked and dressed in black, targeted the windows of MacDonald’s restaurants, of Nike and Gap stores, and of banks.” [Francis Dupuis-Déri, “Anarchism and the politics of affinity groups.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 18, number 1, spring–summer 2010. Pages 40-61.]

“Throughout the last decade I have participated in the cross-pollination between queer/AIDS activism and anarchist-inspired global justice movements in New York, with all their fits and starts, and occasional successes. To make sense of these experiences, I have employed an autoethnographic approach to consider the links and conflicts between queer and anarchist organizing traditions. Here my participant observations are compared with historical evidence, theory, and interviews with key actors …. My aim is to come to a closer understanding of the interconnections and conflicts between these movements. While the interviews featured are all with men; I hope the project highlights the ways such activists contribute to a multi-issue, multi-gender, anarchist queer organizing ethos that Emma Goldman helped articulate as she romped around the city a century ago.” [Benjamin Shepard, “Bridging the divide between queer theory and anarchism.” Sexualities. Volume 13, number 4, August 2010. Pages 511-527.]

“On the occasion of its ten-year anniversary, the antiglobalization movement has been brought out of its slumber. This is to be expected, as anniversaries and nostalgia often trump the here and now in political action. What is troublesome, though, is not the celebration of a historical moment but the attempted resurrection of this movement, known by some as the Global Justice Movement, under the banner of Climate Justice.…

“The antiglobalization movement attempted to surpass the eternal and dichotomizing debate about violence vs. non-violence by recognizing the validity of a diversity of tactics. But in Copenhagen, a move was made on the part of representatives from Climate Justice Action to shut down any discussion of militant tactics, using the excuse of the presence of people (conflated with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations]) from the Global South. Demonstrators were told that any escalation would put these people in danger and possibly have them banned from traveling back to Europe in the future. With any discussion of confrontational and militant resistance successfully marginalized, the thousands of protesters who arrived in Copenhagen were left with demonstrations dictated by the needs and desires of those participating in and corroborating the summit.”

[Tim Simons and Ali Tonak. The Dead End of Climate Justice. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2010. Page 3.]

“For many anarchists, the idea that some can speak or stand for others has been a core problem of states and political parties. In this paper, I will argue that anarchist critiques of state-centric representation provide important insights for democratic alternatives that may emerge from globalisation protest activism and other global justice movements. Nevertheless, I will also argue against more generalised forms of anti-representationalism.” [Teivo Teivainen, “Occupy representation and democratise prefiguration: Speaking for others in global justice movements.” Capital & Class. Volume 40, number 1, 2016. Pages 19-36.]

“… for anarchists, the state may be a meta-system of domination (at the centre or above the matrix and determining others systems), an auxiliary system of protection serving its masters (the bourgeoisie), or only one system of domination among others. Yet, it is always based on a non-egalitarian division of political work involving two classes, the governors and the governed. In the United States in the early twentieth century the former slave Lucy (Gonzalez) Parsons, an anarchist, anti-racist feminist …, used the terms ‘governing class’ … and ‘governmentalists’ to describe the political dominators and the partisans of the state. To acknowledge the existence of two unequal categories or classes in statism – the governors or rulers and the governed or ruled – does not mean that all members of one class are equal, nor that other systems don’t have any influence on such classes.” [Francis Dupuis-Déri, “Is the State Part of the Matrix of Domination and Intersectionality? An Anarchist Inquiry.” Anarchist Studies. Volume 24, number 1, 2016. Pages 36-61.]

“We firmly believe that this learning process is a two-way street. That is, when synthesizing our practice to include these concerns raised by feminists, feminism could stand to benefit from learning from anarchism as well. We see the contributions of anarchists to intersectionality in two major areas. First, anarchism can provide a radical base from which to critique liberal interpretations of intersectionality. Secondly, anarchists can offer a critical analysis of the state.

“Too often people using an intersectional analysis ignore the uniqueness of various systems of domination. One way this is done is by articulating a general opposition to classism. While we believe that class elitism exists, often this opposition to ‘classism’ does not recognize the unique qualities of capitalism and can lead to a position that essentially argues for an end to class elitism under capitalism. As anarchists, we do not just oppose class elitism, we oppose class society itself. We do not want the ruling class to treat us nicer under a system based on inequality and exploitation (i.e. capitalism). We want to smash capitalism to pieces and build a new society in which classes no longer exist — that is, we fight for socialism. Anarchists, as part of the socialist movement, are well-placed to critique this liberal interpretation of intersectionality ….”

[Deric Shannon and J. Rogue. Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 7.]

“In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy and development, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Emancipation, understood here, means perpetual contestation of the alienating effects of contemporary neoliberalization.… I advocate radical democracy, which contra aggregative and deliberative models, places politics on a path towards the co-constitutive promise of anarchism and non-violence. I argue for a conceptualization of public space that emphasizes an anti-hegemonic, anti-sovereign current, thus offering an opportunity to surmount the technocratic elitism that characterizes neoliberal approaches to development and problematizes civil societies. A move towards development and democracy ‘from below’ is recognized as an affront to both ‘local’ elites and ‘global’ capital.” [Simon Springer, “Public Space as Emancipation: Meditations on Anarchism, Radical Democracy, Neoliberalism and Violence.” Antipode. Volume 43, number 2, March 2011. Pages 525-562.]

“The Neoists wanted to avoid any single meaning being imposed on their activities and believed that by bombarding their movement with a series of contradictory interpretations, they would split the meme and simultaneously create a monadic earthquake fierce enough to destroy world culture in its entirety. Thus Neoism was viewed simultaneously as modernist, post-modernist. an avant-garde transgression of modem and post-modem traditions, as underground, Neo-Dadaist and an outgrowth of Fluxus. It was also a rejection of all these things.

“Like every other avant-garde group, the Neoists hoped to project an image of themselves as the very latest trend in culture and this accounts for the more archaic aspects of their project. The occult elements provided a perfect counterpoint to the movement’s faddish innovations, making these appear even more new-fangled and up-to-the-minute. It was a technique that had been employed very successfully by the Dadaists, Surrealists and Situationists.

“Ultimately, the Neoist project was a failure because most of those involved with the group paid no heed to the lessons to be learnt from the critique of the image made by the Situationists and within Auto-Destructive Art.”

[Stewart Home. Neoism, Plagiarism & Praxis. San Francisco, California: AK Press. 1995. Page 98.]

“Since the anti globalisation movement has discovered there is food to be found in dumpsters, people made up this funny word freeganism, and created an anti capitalist critique to go with it, some might even claim it is a lifestyle. This trend is blocking the path towards total liberation since it is blurring the lines between speciesism and anticapitalism, creating confusing situations. Such as walking into an anarchist space to find people with ALF patches skinning a rabbit in the middle of the room and preparing a pot of stinking roadkill bone broth, preaching that this is a more natural way of living. Which is exactly the same kind of rhetoric that homophobes and sexists use to defend their stupid shit.…

“Some would say common activities practised world-over for centuries like hopping trains, hitchhiking, shoplifting, table diving as methods to not spend money to live are part of a ’freegan lifestyle’ for reasons such as carbon footprints, environmental reasons and to ’make a stand’ against capitalism. The practise of paying lip service to veganism is adopted by some freegans by only eating animal ’products’ that otherwise would be wasted, as an anticapitalist attempt to combat meat and dairy industries.”

[Anonymous. Freeganism is not anarchy, its just easy. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2015. Page 3.]

“Privilege is a matter of power. It equates benefits, including access to resources and positions of influence, and can be considered in terms of both psychological or emotional benefits, as well as economic or material benefits. It is much more than personal behaviours, interactions, and language, and can neither be wished, nor confessed away. The social division of wealth and the conditions under which we live and work shape our existence, and cannot be transformed through individual actions. We must organize together to challenge the material infrastructure that accumulates power (one result of which is privilege). Anything less leads to privilege reductionism—the reduction of complex systems of oppression whose structural basis is material and institutional to a mere matter of individual interactions and personal behaviours.” [Common Cause Ottawa. With Allies Like These: Reflections on Privilege Reductionism. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2014. Page 10.]

“In activist discourse, fetishism recurs as something to be avoided.

“Ben and Claire, in their reflection on protests staged in 2002 at the Woomera immigration detention centre in South Australia, are concerned ‘that the Woomera protests should not be overly fetishised.’ Claire urges that ‘it’s important for those of us outside the fences to stop fetishising those inside as somehow being the incarnation of certain ideological fantasies.’ For Ben and Claire, the fetish appears as an obstruction to authenticity and singularity – that of the protests at the Woomera detention centre, as well as the lives of those imprisoned within it.…

“The significance of fetishism to activism was also borne out in conversations informing this study.

“I interviewed Kris, who has worked with diverse grassroots international campaigns for many years. He noted that ‘there’s a problem with fetishising third world colleagues…we try to avoid it but it’s always a possibility. We [first world activists] have to realise that these guys have flaws like we all have flaws….’

“A fellow campaigner, Kate, said fetishisation is ‘a notorious problem in [first world] activist training contexts for international projects.’

“Kate also observed that first world activists ‘often overlook the fact that the third world fetishises the first, too, which is another example of fetishisation – as though people from the third world are too pure to be fetishisers.’ …

“The first readings of the fetish fall within religious, economic and social frameworks associated with European colonisation in the seventeenth century. This project was defined by Christianity, capitalism and its civilising mission.”

[Ann Deslandes. Activism as Fetishism: a pamphlet essay for Activists. Berkeley, California: Anarchist Zine Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 3.]

“After observing that ‘Delinquency at the beginning of the 1970s expressed a desire for freedom, a wild turn, a game of bands’ and how this ‘criminal freedom’ was brought to an end in the very early 1980s as a result of extremely hard police repression and the blackmail imposed by the ‘reign of necessity,’ to Os Cangaceiros, all that remained was to take note of the ‘end of an epoch’ of thoughtlessness and to prepare for the advent of an epoch of desperation marked by the return of the ‘dangerous class’ to the most uncontrolled rage. ‘We talk constantly about violence; it is our element (and we could even say) our daily destiny. Violence is first of all the conditions imposed on us, the police defense of them and, unfortunately more rarely, that which we throw back in their faces.’ More gravediggers of the old world than builders of the new one, closer to the poor and their explosions of violence than to a working class that is ideologically assigned a redemptive historical mission, Os Cangaceiros have endeavored to give voice and reason to the refusal of all the conditions of existence, even when this refusal might assume especially ferocious forms, with an awareness that certainly couldn’t come from any political militancy, towards which they have always exhibited the greatest contempt, but rather from a genuine dimension of life outside the law, claimed with pride.” [Os Cangaceiros. A Crime Called Freedom: The Writings of Os Cangaceiros. Volume I. Wolfi Landstreicher, translator. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2006. Page 6.]

“I define ‘critical philosophical anarchism’ as the view which examines the best candidates for moral theories of political obligation and derives from their failure, as a constructive conclusion of its own, the result that there is no general political obligation and that in this respect political institutions remain unjustified. Operative in this approach is a prior standard of theoretical criticism merged with some idea of what an ideal legitimate society should be like and philosophical anarchism considers all existing states to be illegitimate insofar as they fail to meet this ideal.

“My aim is to closely examine this anarchist position as it figures within the debate on political obligation in order to demonstrate that it offers something valuable to the perspective we have towards political institutions and our relation to them and what this contribution is. I stress both its critical perspective and its ideal of legitimacy because I see them as defining features of this position and that they incorporate those elements which are of essential value in the arguments of philosophical anarchism against political obligation. These parameters are also envisaged as compatible with certain valuable features of communal anarchism.

“The anarchist enters the debate on political obligation with a concern about freedom. He concentrates on the importance for individuals to be selfgoverned, to be able to have a say on and determine the main aspects of their own lives. But how can this be compatible with external constraints? The respect for self-government and the rejection of constraints are characteristic anarchist arguments, each of which might take, and at times has taken, priority over the other within the anarchist tradition. Yet, an anarchist can insist on the priority o f freedom and criticise political institutions without any prior rejection of constraints in general. The anarchist is sensitive to the fact that political constraints create problems for self-determination. It is with this realisation that the critical philosophical anarchist criticises the way traditional defences of political institutions work. What he wants to point out is that if these defences start with a different perspective on political institutions, one which involves centrally the task to require and show a positive relation between them and self-determination, they will address more successfully the difficulties which they face in their effort to justify political reality. The debate, and with it our relation to the state, can then develop in a different light, which will provide more fruitful ways of accessing political institutions. It is these features which are significant in the position of critical philosophical anarchism and which is the task of this thesis to explain and defend.”

[Magda Egoumenides. Critical Philosophical Anarchism: A Defence of An Anarchist Approach to the Problem of Political Authority. Ph.D. thesis (U.S. English, dissertation). University College London. London. 2004. Pages 19-21.]

“In the recent debate on globalization the question of the state has been reduced to its economic dimension (deregulation of national markets and consequent crisis of state intervention, etc.) or a crisis of national identity. This is a partial conception and reductive of the role played by the state in contemporary capitalism. If we want to create the basis for a renewed libertarian critical theory, we have to take seriously into account the fact that the state is a fetish that dominates our daily life and our way of thinking, often understood as such by those who become radically hostile to the world as it is, which, through its procedures (individual) and its tools (disciplinary), insinuates itself in all sorts of ways into the daily life of every individual. In other words, the state is not only the holder of the instruments of repression (police, prisons), nor is it the simple regulator of the economy and guarantor of ‘national unity’ Analyses that present a crisis of the Keynesian state as a crisis of the nation state have to be viewed with reservations, because the state is also a ιmediating’ power, a powerful machine that penetrates the smallest recesses of our lives. In order to confront it, it is necessary to begin by attempting to unmask the dynamics and the mechanisms, and, above all, to understand the reasons for its expansion.…

“The contemporary state is a complex apparatus, segmented and a little everywhere, henceforth, decentralized. The ‘alternative’ participation in the cadre of local powers cannot last long unless they restore hierarchical roles (those who decide what sectors and resources to be submitted to debate and above all to decision making) or insert themselves into a context of radical change at the local, regional, and national levels, of the relation of forces-between capital and labor but also between administrative logics, founded on the delegation of power, and logics of social liberation, supposing a veritable reappropriation. Without this dimension, a critical theory of statist power that extols participation of the base—a theme that in itself can be inscribed in a libertarian critical theory—ends up returning to the statist logic. The problem is that, in this conception, the state tends to be confused, by simplification and misunderstanding of the phenomenon, with the nation state. And consequently, once one declares one’s aversion for the ‘nation’ and rediscovers the ‘local’ and ‘civil society,’ the state loses all problematic character, whether on the theoretical or political plain, and remains a fundamentally neutral ‘place,’ apparently open to reappropriation.”

[Collegamenti Wobbly, “Notes for a libertarian critical theory of state power: Notes by Collegamenti Wobbly on an anarchist view of government.” Anarcho-syndicalist Review. Number 41, summer 2005. Pagination unknown.]

“Anarchists understandably feel an intrinsic and visceral opposition to gentrification. It represents a capitalist attack on our neighbourhoods and homes, a destructive expression of state and corporate power that uproots entire communities. Perhaps most of all, it enrages us because it so often seems largely beyond our control, watching landlords and speculators mould neighbourhoods as they will, with the firm support of the state. As disgusting as this situation is on its own, there are also several reasons that anarchists should oppose gentrification from a purely strategic point of view.

“… gentrification is both a process of transforming the city to reflect changes in the global economy and a restructuring of urban space to meet the constantly expanding needs of capital investment: this effectively makes gentrification the urban front line of capitalism. If we can halt the incursion of gentrification into a neighbourhood, we are effectively halting capitalism?s expansion, and denying capital the chance to reproduce itself at our expense.

“Gentrification brings with it increased repression through the installation of additional CCTV [closed-circuit television] surveillance cameras, the further commodification of public space, a broken window approach to policing and the spread of private security. It is a process perpetuated by local business and resident associations, developers and city counsellors: manifestations of the ruling class banding together to collectively assert their class power. Struggling against gentrification thus means struggling against the spread of this repressive apparatus and a chance to sharpen our skills while defying the collaborative efforts of capitalists and the state.

“Finally, neighbourhood-level struggles against gentrification can build a capacity to assert our own class power by spreading confidence in the possibilities of collective action. The violence of gentrification pulls back the veil of capitalism, showing it plainly for what it truly is: a contest between classes with mutually opposing interests. The state’s willing collaboration in this process, be it through the blatant doublespeak of city counsellors or the eagerness of police to defend the private property rights of absentee landlords, can make our neighbours increasingly receptive to anarchist ideas, as they become validated through lived experience.”

[Two Toronto Members. Short Circuit: Towards an Anarchist Approach to Gentrification. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2003. Page 12.]

“Consider the many areas in which various political ecologies have already made important contributions. Socialist ecology and world systems theory offer insights concerning the analysis of value, globalization, crisis theory (encompassing economic, political, cultural, psychological, and ecological dimensions), the critique of ideology, the interaction between conditions, forces and relations of production, and core-periphery relations. Social ecology has made contributions in such areas as the critique of the state and political power, techno-bureaucratic domination, theories of democratization, and the analysis of the system of hierarchy and domination. Ecofeminism presents insights concerning embodied practice and forms of consciousness, the critique of patriarchy, the relational self, and the ethics and politics of care. Deep ecology and related tendencies raise important issues concerning the critique of anthropocentrism, intrinsic value, intrinsic good and ethical value theory. Cultural ecology, including bioregional theory, raises important questions regarding language, the imaginary, social creativity, ethos, regional realities, the sense of place, and cultural situatedness. Neoprimitivism, post-Situationism and related forms of eco-anarchism present challenging ideas concerning the technological system, the spectacle, and the mass society of commodity consumption. And this brief summary is very far from exhausting even the most general areas in which important work has taken place, and which cannot be neglected by any comprehensive dialectical political ecology.” [John Clark, “Contributions to the Critique of Political Ecology.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. Volume 12, number 3, September 29-36.]

“One of my strongest interests is the development of a critical and radically dialectical political ecology. It has never occurred to me that this goal could be furthered by rejecting ‘political action and education’ for the sake of ‘personal redemption, ritualistic behavior, the denigration of human will, and the virtues of human irrationality’ or by adopting ‘self-effacement, passivity, and obedience to the ‘laws of nature’ that are held to be supreme over the claims of human activity and praxis.’” [John Clark, “Marx’s Natures: A Response to Foster and Burkett.” Organization & Environment. Volume 14, number 4, December 2001. Pages 432-442.]

“… the way is opened for the development of a truly ecological dialectic that avoids what [Karl] Marx aptly diagnoses as ‘the antithesis of nature and history.’ In such a dialectic, the entire course of natural history, including the emergence of life, consciousness, and self-consciousness (with all its modes of rationality and symbolization) are seen as aspects of the development of a complex whole. Central to such an analysis is an elaboration of the mutual determination of all forms of life within the biosphere as a unity-in-diversity.” [John P. Clark, “Marx’s inorganic body.” Environmental Ethics. Volume 11, issue 3, fall 1989. Pages 243-258.]

“The question for ecological ethics is not whether every sentient animal should be able to flourish but rather the degree to which communities of life are allowed to flourish, often at the expense of countless individual organisms.” [John P. Clark, “Capabilities Theory and the Limits of Liberal Justice: On Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice.” Human Rights Review. Volume 10, 2009. Pages 593-604.]

“There are (at least) four spheres that are essential to the analysis of how social reality is generated, how it is maintained, and how it might be transformed. These spheres are the social institutional structure, the social ideology, the social imaginary, and the social ethos. The complex dialectic between these four spheres and various dimensions of these spheres must be explored in specific detail to make sense out of the senseless folly of the Non-Act. Since there is a dialectical relationship between the spheres they should not be thought of as discrete realms. They are analytically distinguishable but at the same time dialectically identical with one another. The detailed analysis of this dialectic and the possibilities for transcending it cannot be undertaken here, but a brief sketch of the project might be helpful.” [John Clark, “Critique of the Gotham Program.” Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination. Volume 3, number 2, 2010. Pages 57-84.]

“To get the rest of the questions on my perspective out of the way, I should mention that the wording of the subtitle (‘A Libertarian Perspective’) reflects a long process of indecision and changes, and is something I still find unsatisfactory. I vacillated between the adjectives ‘mutualist,’ ‘anarchist,’ ‘individualist anarchist,’ and ‘left-libertarian,’ not really satisfied with any of them because of their likely tendency to pigeonhole my work or scare away my target audience. I finally ended up (with some misgivings) with plain old ‘Libertarian.’ It’s a term of considerable contention between the classical liberal and libertarian socialist camps. I don’t mean the choice of term in a sense that would exclude either side. In fact, as an individualist in the tradition of [Benjamin] Tucker and the rest of the Boston anarchists, I embrace both the free market libertarian and libertarian socialist camps. I chose ‘libertarian’ precisely it was large and contained multitudes: it alone seemed sufficiently broad to encompass the readership I had in mind.” [Kevin A. Carson. Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective. Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge. 2008. Page 1.]

“… where rents and inflated prices result, not from the market mechanism itself, but from government-enforced artificial scarcity, we should eliminate the artificial scarcity. And when negative externalities result from government subsidies to waste or insulation from the real market costs of pollution, we should simply eliminate the legal framework that promotes the negative externality in the first place. Rather than maintaining the purchasing power needed to consume present levels of output, we should reduce the amount of purchasing power required to consume those levels of output. We should eliminate all artificial scarcity barriers to meeting as many of our consumption needs as possible outside the wage economy.” [Kevin A. Carson. The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto. Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge. 2010. Page 166.]

“The problem is that the state, by artificially reducing the costs of large size and restraining the competitive ill effects of calculation problems, promotes larger size than would be the case in a free market—and with it calculation problems to a pathological extent. The state promotes inefficiencies of large size and hierarchy past the point at which they cease to be worth it, from a standpoint of net social efficiency, because those receiving the benefits of large size are not the same parties who pay the costs of inefficiency.

“The solution is to eliminate the state policies that have created the situation, and allow the market to punish inefficiency.To get there, though, some libertarians need to reexamine their unquestioned sympathies for big business as an ‘oppressed minority’ and remember that they’re supposed to be defending free markets—not the winners under the current statist economy.”

[Kevin A. Carson, “Economic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth.” The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. Volume 57, number 5, June 2007. Pages 13-18.]

“The assumption of this paper is that anxiety is a real affective force that acts on individual and collective bodies and is created by global material and economic conditions. I do not wish to suggest that anxiety is a discursive construct, but rather that states can alter structures of affect through policy and discourse, and they do so to suit the needs of neoliberal capital. I argue that any viable resistance to state structurations of affect needs to critically reveal existing structures of affect, and resist these through a reconceived understanding and the creation of new affects at an embodied level.” [Rhiannon Firth, “Somatic pedagogies: Critiquing and resisting the affective discourse of the neoliberal state from an embodied anarchist perspective.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. Volume 16, number 4, November 2016. Pages 121-142.]

“The purpose of this essay is political revolution. And I don’t mean a ‘revolution’ in libertarian political theory, or a revolutionary new political strategy, or the kind of ‘revolution’ that consists in electing a cadre of new and better politicians to the existing seats of power. When I say a ‘revolution,’ I mean the real thing: I hope that this essay will contribute to the overthrow of the United States government, and indeed all governments everywhere in the world. You might think that the argument of an academic essay is a pretty slender reed to lean on; but then, every revolution has to start somewhere, and in any case what I have in mind may be somewhat different from what you imagine. For now, it will be enough to say that I intend to give you some reasons to become an individualist anarchist, and undermine some of the arguments for preferring minimalist government to anarchy. In the process, I will argue that the form of anarchism I defend is best understood from what Chris Sciabarra has described as a dialectical orientation in social theory, as part of a larger effort to understand and to challenge interlocking, mutually reinforcing systems of oppression, of which statism is an integral part—but only one part among others. Not only is libertarianism part of a radical politics of human liberation, it is in fact the natural companion of revolutionary Leftism and radical feminism.” [Charles Johnson, “Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism.” Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country? Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan, editors. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2008. Pages 155-188.]

“Agorism can be defined simply: it is thought and action consistent with freedom. The moment one deals with ‘thinking,’ ‘acting,’ ‘consistency,’ and especially ‘freedom,’ things get more and more complex.…

“Agorism is an ideology, then, but it is also a scientific and definitely materialist way of thinking. It is not a religious view — save that it believes absolute freedom to be moral — nor does it wish to displace anyone’s religious views — unless they lead to slavery. Agorism wants no ‘true believers’ in the sense of blind followers. Like any scientifically based mode of thought, it will evolve as does our understanding of reality. One who has faith in something proven false that was once a tenet of agorism is not an agorist.”

[Samuel Edward Konkin III. An Agorist Primer. Huntington Beach, California: Koman Publishing (KoPubCo). 2008. Pages 10-11.]

“Self-aware counter-economics enough but some burn to do more – fight or support struggle. Combativity inadequate without strategy. Phases of agorist growth decide appropriate strategy. Tactics that are always appropriate. New Libertarian Alliance as association for entrepreneuring Liberty. Libertarian creed is constraint of New Libertarian tactics. Phase 0: Zero-Density Agorist Society. Raise consciousness. Phase 1: Low-Density Agorist Society. Radical caucuses and Libertarian Left. Combat anti-principles. Anticipate crises of statism. Phase 2: Mid-Density, Small Condensation Agorist Society. The State to strike back but restrained by agorist contamination. NLA [New Libertarian Alliance] appears as its sustenance arrives. Accelerating revolutionary conditions. Phase 3: High- Density, Large Condensation Agorist Society. Permanent crisis of statism. Need to crush counter-economy grows as ability wanes. Antiprinciples greatest threat. The State’s final strike: Revolution. Strategy includes delaying tactics and counter-intelligence. Correct definition of (violent) Revolution. Phase 4: Agorist Society with Statist Impurities. Collapse of the State and simultaneous dissolution of NLA. Home!…

“The function of the pseudo-science of Establishment economics, even more than making predictions (like the Imperial Roman augurers) for the ruling class, is to mystify and confuse the ruled class as to where their wealth is going and how it is taken. An explanation of how people keep their wealth and property from the State is then Counter-Establishment economics, or Counter- Economics [2] for short. The actual practice of human actions that evade, avoid and defy the State is countereconomic activity, but in the same sloppy way ‘economics’ refers to both the science and what it studies, Counter- Economics will undoubtedly be used. Since this writing is Counter-Economic theory itself, what will be referred to as Counter-Economics is the practice.”

[Samuel Edward Konkin III. New Libertarian Manifesto. Huntington Beach, California: Koman Publishing (KoPubCo). 1983. No pagination.]

“Surprisingly little systematic research has been done in counter-economics since the agorist discovery a decade after the immersion of the agorist cadre. They surfaced to find a changed political landscape. It had been expected that their more-timid allies would stay aboveground to conduct officially-sanctioned research, but that failed to happen for now obvious institutional reasons. Hence, determined to report their findings, take advantage of freedom of the press and academic freedom to do so, and, incidentally, raise families, the publishing cadre formed the Agorist Institute in the libertarian-rich American Southwest at the end (symbolically) of 1984. The rest of the history of agorism is the history of The Agorist Institute’s trials and tribulations (which will presumably be published someday). AI flourished at the end of the 1980’s, hitting its nadir as counter-economics – if not full agorism – swept the globe and tossed socialism into the dustbin of history.” [Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3), “The Last, Whole Introduction to Agorism.” The Agorist Quarterly. Volume 1, number 1, fall 1995. Pagination unknown.]

“The Counter-Economic class cannot work against its interests as long as it is acting counter-economically. Those supporting statists politically have internal psychological problems without doubt, but as a class, these acts dampen the weakening of the State marginally. (Someone who earns $60,000 tax-free and contributes up to $3000 politically is a net revolutionary by several thousand dollars, several hundred percent!)” [Wally Conger. Agorist Class Theory: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis. PDF file. No location, publication information, or pagination.]

“Agorism is an offshoot of the demarchy [rule by a random or scientific sample of the population] movement, where democratic or demarchic voting is used to say what we want, while betting markets determine how to get it.” [Agorism. PDF file. No authorship, location, publication information, or pagination.]

“But who is an anarcho-purist? What is anarcho-purism? It is a term that gets thrown about quite often these days, particularly in activist circles. We should, therefore, try to make our thinking clear on this matter. An anarcho-purism is always a morality as opposed to an ethics. Morality is a statement, such as ‘thou shalt not,’ instead of a question posed in the moment. It is a set, blind standard that rules over behavior. Anarcho-purism is a morality that tries to keep anarchism pure and separate from certain tactics or from working with certain groups for the sake of purity.” [sasha k. “Activism” and “Anarcho-Purism.” Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Page 2.]

“Total freedom means individual freedom …

“… The fetishization of an ill-defined commune and the accompanying total erasure of the importance of individual agency, difference, and desire reproduces the State form. We think that the most powerful and sustainable struggles are founded in the desires and lives of the singular individuals that participate in them. This isn’t to say that we’re not interested in forms of self-organization that surpass the affinity group – of course this tool of organization only serves certain objectives, and we equally want to coordinate with and engage anyone who shares our passion for freedom. This also isn’t to say we don’t have a deep appreciation for the moments of collective jouissance [emjoyment] found in the riot where our bodies connect in dangerous and beautiful ways, or wouldn’t enjoy the feeling of telling landlords and police to fuck off with our neighbours, but this passion arises from and is fueled by our own unique histories and experiences. In fact, the webs of friendship – chosen families – we tenderly construct and care for are foundational to our struggles. We understand an emphasis on the importance of feeling transcended and surpassed, this speaks to our spiritual relationship to struggle, and how our stories can interweave with all those setting fires within Leviathan in different times and places. But we don’t want association without freedom – we want to foster an inter-dependent constellation of friendships, where relations are authentic to each person’s desires, and where the collective dynamics foster strong individual grounding.…

“Haters of individualism frequently mistake alienation, and especially the brand of alienation we experience under neoliberalism, with individual will. Neoliberal society makes people materially and psychologically dependent. It creates identities through nations, education, social hierarchies, and consumerism. To reinforce their own subjectivities, the neoliberal individuals have many choices offered to them, and each of these different possibilities is consumable and included in the realm of the liberal world. Individual freedom is only valued in this alienated conception.”

[Anonymous. Putting into practice: adding to the conversation on anarchist activity in Montreal. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2017. Pages 14-15.]

“For some time now, animal liberation and the activists who struggle in its name have been embroiled in heated discourse and action. Although animal lib [liberation] theory and activism have rarely been welcomed or taken seriously by the mainstream Left, many anarchists are beginning to recognize their legitimacy, not only as a valid cause, but as an integral and indispensable aspect of radical theory and revolutionary practice. While most people who call themselves anarchists have not embraced animal liberation and its corresponding lifestyle—veganism—growing numbers of young anarchists are adopting ecology—and animal-inclusive mindsets as part of their overall praxis.…

“In this essay I wish to demonstrate that any approach to social change must be comprised of an understanding not only of social relationships, but also of the relationships between humans and nature, including non-human animals. I also hope to show herein why no approach to animal liberation is feasible without a thorough understanding of and immersion in the social revolutionary endeavour. We must all become, if you will, ‘veganarchists.’ …

[Brian A. Dominick. Animal Liberation and Social Revolution: a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perspective on veganism, with a preface by Joseph M. Smith. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 1997. Pages 4-5.]

“Radical factions such as the abolitionist approach and veganarchism make great efforts to undo the nonhuman animal rights movement’s marginalization by the left. They generally do this by pointing out that injustices or discriminations against nonhuman animals and other injustices or discriminations are equally important and interconnected. This is also reflected in many of the articles and posts on their websites and Facebook pages, which often address injustices against a variety of human groups.” [Silvia Ilonka Wolf, “Beyond nonhuman animal rights: a grassroots movement in Istanbul and its alignment with other causes.” Interface: a journal for and about social movements. Volume 7, number 1, May 2015. Pages 40-69.]

“[Brian A.] Dominick and other veganarchists … agree with those feminist, critical race, and class analyses … that connect the exploitation of non-humans with the oppression of marginalized groups of humans. Dominick writes that intra-human oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, and ageism are based on the same roots as oppression of non-humans, and must be addressed as a whole: ‘To decide one oppression is valid and the other not is to consciously limit one’s understanding of the world; it is to engage oneself in voluntary ignorance, more often than not for personal convenience.’” [Ian Werkheiser, “Domination and Consumption: an Examination of Veganism, Anarchism, and Ecofeminism.” PhaenEx. Volume 8, number 2, fall/winter 2013. Pages 161-184.]

“Veganarchism or Vegan anarchism, is the political philosophy of Veganism (more specifically animal rights and earth liberation) and anarchism, creating a combined praxis that is designed to be a means for social revolution. This encompasses viewing the state and capitalism, as well as hierarchical structures in general, as unnecessary and harmful to animals, both human and non-human, whilst practising a Vegan lifestyle. It is either perceived as a combined theory, or that both philosophies are essentially the same. It is further described as an antispeciesist perspective on green anarchism, or an anarchist perspective on animal liberation.

“Veganarchists typically view oppressive dynamics within society to be interconnected, from statism, racism and sexism to human supremacy and redefine Veganism as a radical philosophy that sees the state as harmful to animals. Ideologically, it is a human, animal, and Earth liberation movement that is fought as part of the same struggle. Those who believe in Veganarchy can be either against reform for animals or for it, although do not limit goals to changes within the law.”

[Gary Sweet, Pam Carter, Jeff Kaplan, Joshua Graves, Zara Smith, Ben Jennings, Shilo Terrance, Sabina Lundgren, and Erin Kavanagh, “The Extreme Vegan: Activism, the spicey side of Veganism.” The Vegan Handbook. Pam Carter, editor. Baltimore, Maryland: The Vegetarian Handbook. November, 2015. Page 5.]

“Although we would regard aspects of animal liberation as expressions of communism, opposition to the abuse of animals does not always sit comfortably with other aspects of the communist movement. Animal liberation doesn’t just pose an aspect of what appears to be wrong with capitalism which revolutionaries can then fit into their general blueprint for class struggle. It makes demands on a both a perceived revolutionary process and a perceived revolutionary direction (Communist Headache).

“In some areas there may be apparent contradictions. For instance in Brazil, landless labourers are occupying land belonging to big landowners and cultivating it, including rearing animals. This is an expression of the communist movement too. But the communist movement is not a monolithic entity united around a party line. It is a dynamic entity composed of diverse, and sometimes contradictory efforts. There are many issues on which a range of different positions are possible – for instance the use of technology.

“Disagreements would continue even in the society that would emerge as the communist movement developed to a stage where capitalism was in the process of being abolished across large parts of the world. Communism is not the application of a universal moral code, or the creation of a uniform society, and there would be no state or similar mechanism to impose, say veganism, even if many people thought it desirable. The question of how to live with fairness right be resolved in different ways in different times and places. The animal liberation movement would form one pole of the debate.”

[The Red & Anarchist Action Network. Beasts of Burden: Capitalism – Animals – Communism. London: Antagonism Press. 1999. No pagination.]

“As opposed to anthropocentrism, I would like to see more comrades living and fighting for an ethic of anarchy and liberation for all lifeforms, not just the smartphone-wielding bipedal variety. To frame the concept in more positive terms, it could be called biocentric anarchy, or bioanarchy. Unlike many primitivists, who advocate hunting, a key practice of bioanarchy might be veganism; a philosophy refusal to participate in animal exploitation by, among other things, not commodifying and consuming them. But while veganism is a vital element in the fight against speciesism, it is not enough in itself. For a start, anyone can claim to be vegan, including fascists. And while looking at our own habits is a fundamental starting point, it’s not going to have a major impact on the ecocidal juggernaut unless we also attack the corporations and governments most responsible.

“To go a little further then, biocentric anarchy is a way of challenging ourselves to deepen our understanding of ourselves as animals and reconnect with our non-human cousins. It propels us to reorient our ideas and practices as anarchists so as to place equal importance on the liberation non-human life from the clutches of anthropocentrism and capitalism, as we do people from the forces of domination.…

“So what might biocentric anarchy look like?

“A necessary first step is a deepening of one’s relationship with the world beyond our own species. It is taking the time to really observe other lifeforms and communities. It is looking, listening and reflecting. It might involve reading about other living beings and the earth’s history and processes, or even watching nature documentaries – particularly if you live in the city where wildlife is less common.”

[Anonymous. Biocentric Anarchy. London: Act for Freedom Now! 2016. No pagination.]

“A society of people who are responsible for their own health and able to gather or grow their own medicines is a hard society to rule. These days we are dependent on the power structure of industrial health care — the secret society of the doctors, the white-male-dominated medical schools, the corporate decision makers with their toxic pharmaceuticals and heartless greed and labs full of tortured beings. That dependence is one more thing keeping us tied down to the State and unable to rebel with all our hearts or even envision a world without such oppression. With a new system of healing, based on self-knowledge and herbal wisdom, we will be that much more free.

“Offering real health care alternatives will help to calm some people’s fears about returning to an anarchistic, Earth-centered way of life. There is a false security in the men with the big machines, ready to put you back together again (if you have enough money). What is ignored is the fact that industrial society causes most of the dis-eases that people fear. Living free on a healing Earth while surrounded by true community and eating real food will prove to be a better medicine than anything you can buy.

“What steps can we make now towards creating this new system of medicine? We all need to learn what we can about our own health. This can be through training in one or more of the surviving models of traditional healing and/or through self-observation. How do you feel when you’re just starting to get a cold? What kinds of problems come up repeatedly, especially when you’re stressed out? If you’re a womyn, how long is your cycle and what does the blood look like? Understanding how our bodies act in times of health can help us recognize the very early stages of dis-ease when herbs are the most useful.

“People who have some background in healing (in the traditional or industrial systems) can be a great help to those of us just learning. Healers who are working to form this new model, whether collectively or through their individual practices, should keep in mind that commitment to the Earth and a decentralized form are central to truly revolutionary medicine.

“In these times of change, everything is being examined and either destroyed, rebuilt, or created from our hearts. Industrialism has affected every aspect of our lives — we are just starting to realize how much has been lost. Medicine is just one part of the machine that we have to take back and re-create into a form that works for the society we will become. Every herb, pill, and procedure should be judged on its sustainability and accessibility to small groups of people. We can start with ourselves, within our communities and circles, but should never stop expanding outwards until industrial medicine rusts in a forgotten grave, a victim of its own imbalances.”

[Laurel Luddite. This is Anarcha-Herbalism: Thoughts On Health and Healing For the Revolution. Berkeley, California: The Anarchist Library imprint of Open Guild Organization. 2009. Pages 4-5.]

“The aim of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS) is to provide a space for the development of a ‘critical’ approach to animal studies, one which perceives that relations between human and nonhuman animals are now at a point of crisis which implicates the planet as a whole.…

“… In recent years Critical Animal Studies has emerged as a necessary and vital alternative to the insularity, detachment, hypocrisy, and profound limitations of mainstream animal studies that vaporizes their flesh and blood realities to reduce them to reified signs, symbols, images, words on a page, or protagonists in a historical drama, and thereby utterly fail to confront them not as ‘texts.’ but rather as sentient beings who live and die in the most sadistic, barbaric, and wretched cages of technohell that humanity has been able to devise, the better to exploit them for all they are worth.”

[Steve Best, Anthony J. Nocella II, Richard Kahn, Carol Gigliotti, and Lisa Kemmerer. Introducing Critical Animal Studies. Binghamton, New York: The Institute for Critical Animal Studies. 2007. No pagination.]

“The problem of moving beyond anthropomorphism and the centuries-old human/animal hierarchy has preoccupied feminists for several decades now, so both feminist studies and critical animal studies involve questions of how to inherit tradition.” [Dawne McCance. Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. 2013. Page 89.]

“Law is anthropocentric. With the limited exception of its treatment of the corporation, law is a system of rules that privileges the concept of the human and ascribes reality through a human perspective. Appreciating this, it is truly impressive that animal issues in the law have become so prominent throughout the legal education system. With this increased exposure to posthumanist critiques of the legal system and its status for and treatment of animals, an increasing number of those involved in legal education are rethinking the law’s species-based hierarchy that places humans at the apex. This flourishing interest in animal law is paralleled by growth in the field of Critical Animal Studies (CAS). However, these two disciplines have developed independently of each other. Acknowledging this, animal law scholarship is currently poised to incorporate the insights of CAS. Integrating such insight into the analysis of animal issues in the law will rectify the speciesist and otherwise exclusionary formulations of the socially constructed differences between various species, which have so far been unquestioned assumptions. CAS offers an understanding of these socially constructed differences and advances a common mission between issues identified as animal injustices and those identified as human injustices. CAS stresses the interconnection between human and animal issues, not simply parallels. This important synthesis can subvert the confinement of animal issues in the legal sphere and is key to extending these essential issues into a more diverse community.” [Maneesha Deckha, “Critical animal studies and animal law.” Animal Law. Volume 18, issue 2, October 2012. Pages 207+.]

“All the essays that constitute this issue take up productive trans-pollinations among human, animal, sex, and gender. While cuts and division of any kind among these original and powerful contributions could only be antithetical to their very arguments, in broad strokes, we can say that half the pieces bring the theoretical juncture of trans, feminist, queer, and posthuman theories and critical animal studies to bear on the issue of sexual difference, indifference, and humanism. These theoretical explorations interrogate topics such as species panic, the animal symbolic, and the relation between difference and indifference from a trans perspective. They do so in order to demonstrate the extent to which tranimals have the transformative power to interrupt humanism and its sexually differentiated legacy by challenging the boundaries between, and existence of, differentiated, essential kinds.” [Eva Hayward and Jami Weinstein, “Introduction: Tranimalities in the Age of Trans* Life.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Volume 2, number 2, May 2015. Pages 195-208.]

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