I know about Bakunin, Kropotkin, Stirner, and Tolstoy but I haven’t read their work. I’m not really sure about Tolstoy though since I think he mainly just wrote about the average life in Russia rather than anarchism.
How do/can anarchists tell the difference between Anarcho-Capitalism, Individualist-Anarchism, Mutualism and Corporatism?
If you could magic a library or online archive into existence, where all the work of tracking down texts from various different libraries and hard-to-find corners of the internet was done for you, what would the collection look like? And what would it be called?
I've helped digitize a fair few texts that were hidden away in physical libraries, and turned a lot of badly photo scanned books into nice to read books with hyperlinked chapters and footnotes, etc.
I've also been trying to help find a web developer up for building some cool online archives and a classic forum board for people to talk about them. So, I know this is a long shot, but if you have those skills and would like to be involved let me know e.g. the text linked below lists a bunch of already digitized texts that could be split off to start off some new archives:
Finally, are there any cool existing libraries that come close to your dream library? I'll quote a few that I know of below.
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One of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive collections of its kind, with materials on anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, anti-war and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, ecology, labor and workers’ rights, feminism, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, the New Left, the Spanish Civil War, and youth and student protest.
The collection includes books, pamphlets, periodicals, and more, and is noteworthy for its printed ephemera and holdings of posters, photographs, sheet music, pinback buttons, and scrapbooks. It also includes important archival and manuscript material, as well as recordings of speeches, debates, oral histories, and protest songs.
New material is added regularly through both purchase and donation, with the goal of filling gaps in the historical record, building on existing areas of strength, and meeting the current and emerging needs of researchers, instructors, activists, and others who use the Labadie Collection in the Special Collections Research Center.
The Labadie Collection is named for Detroit labor organizer and anarchist Jo Labadie, who donated his personal library of books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, and memorabilia to the university in 1911. In 2000, we received a large donation of research materials from the National Transgender Library and Archives, adding to our already strong holdings.
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Our archive focuses on social struggles, radical art, and acts of resistance from the 1960s to the present: it contains everything from recent feminist poetry to 1990s techno paraphernalia, from situationist magazines to histories of riots and industrial transformations, from 1970s educational experiments to prison writing.
We proceed from the understanding that social change can happen most effectively when marginalised and oppressed groups can get to know – and tell – their own histories “from below.” Our archival collections challenge the widespread assault on collective memory and the tradition of the oppressed. We aim to counter narratives of historical inevitability and political pessimism with living proof that that many struggles continue.
We run a public programme including archival projects, publications, film screenings, “scan-a-thons” for digitising archival material, workshops, talks and discussion, reading groups, and social nights, all of which encourage active and collective engagement with history of social movements.
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The Feminist Library is a large collection of feminist literature based in London. We are a library and community space and support research, activist and community projects.
In 2020 The Feminist Library celebrated 45 years of archiving and activism. Mainly volunteer run, we have created and looked after one of the most important collections of feminist material in the UK, and provided an inspiring learning and social space for thousands of people.
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theanarchistlibrary.org is (despite its name) an archive focusing on anarchism and anarchist texts.
Within the scope of our use of the term “anarchism” we have been quite broad, but broad does not mean infinite, and basically shrinks down to a set of ideas against the State and capital. This immediately rules out the so-called “anarcho-capitalism”, “anarcho-nationalism” and similar crap.
What is so special about this site?
The library provides a high quality online web browser version of the text along with various other formats, like PDFs, plain text, HTML, EPUB, and XeLaTeX. We actively encourage the DIY printing and the distribution of the texts, so there is no need to ask us for permission to use the texts.
The site provides a way for distributors and friends to change the layout of the PDFs and to create collections of an arbitrary number of texts (1 or more). See the bookbuilder page.
The site also provides an advanced search engine.
All these features come with some responsibility for the people who want to contribute to the library. We ask that uploaders contribute a logical representation of the text, with headings, emphasis, quotation blocks, etc. marked up appropriately. The site provides some tools (inside the web interface) to make this process easy, but some attention and some care is still required. Please be sure to read the manual if you plan to join the project for the mid- to long-term.
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Sprout Distro is an anarchist zine distro (distributor) and publisher based in the occupied territory currently known as the United States.
We distribute zines (see: "What is a Zine?" if you are new to zines) as a way of contributing to the increased proliferation of anarchist projects and resistance. We primarily distribute zines via this website and in person at zine fests, book fairs, and other such events. We make all the zines we carry available as PDFs for folks to download, print, and distribute themselves.
About Our Distro
Our distro mainly focuses on anarchist tactics and skill-building. This means that we have a lot of zines on direct action, organizing, starting projects (ex: collectives, study groups, prisoner support projects), decision-making, street tactics, security, affinity groups, how we relate to each other, etc.
Get In Touch
We welcome feedback from folks, suggestions of zines to carry, new ways to distribute zines, and other projects we should know about. Contact us here.
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A collaborative update and rewrite of Abbie Hoffman's seminal work, Steal This Book. Plus, a collection of related books and essays e.g. books analysing this project's yippie anarchist roots.
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The Library of Unconventional Lives
An archive for collecting together stories of lives lived in unconventional ways. Which could mean something as simple as what it’s like to live on a narrow boat. Or it could mean someone hitchhiking around the world because it was the only way they knew how to process a tough childhood with their sanity intact.
I used to believe in Benjamin Tucker’s idea of associations for defense. But I get negative reactions to that. So what should I advocate instead?
It feels hypocritical but some right(or non-left) political beliefs I have:
Can I have those believes and still be an anarchist, leftist, and liberal?
I’m just curious.
So, I've just left the evils of authoritarian socialism and realised the truth. So, now I'm looking for a group to possibly join to learn from and help.
I have a few questions first
So, in communist groups you have the Maoists, ML's, Trotskyists, tradmarxists
does anarchist spaces have anything like this too? My only possibly though would be some support Anarcho-Syndicalism more than Mahknov. This is just a guess I have no clue
Has the Anarchist Federation (uk) stopped? I've been trying to access there website and its been taken down and there social media presence seems non-existent
I have emailed one group to see what they are about ACG (UK). But, it just seems such a shame there are so many tiny groups.
What are your favourite anarchist texts?
So far, as an intro I've read On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky, about half of Anarchism by Malatesta and a few pages of Emma Goldmans Anarchism and other essays.
Thank you for your time in reading this, any answers would be much appreciated.
I now have a new found hope in anarchism. Please anarchism community don't be like ML's
New to this space but I just wanted to hear your guys thoughts on the crypto currency Monero (XMR).
it seems as though personal independence - from any social structure - is the thrust of anarchy. yet i rarely see it put in those terms.
morning rats
anarchist grad student here researching the
(by sharing the thoughts of African and Black anarchists and their critiques of authoritarian socialism)
(Black anarchists who were former MLs themselves now critiquing the hierarchical and sexist natures of BPP, RAM, etc)
i am claiming that both groups (Black organizations in America + newly elected African leaders embracing socialism/the states they made) reproduced political dependency through centralized authority, decision-making by the elite, and greatly limited the capacity of communities to organize social and economic life outside state structures. they also both recognized that top-down models are structurally vulnerable because they’re very easily to be taken down (CIA and FBI infiltration, surveillance, incarceration, assassination) and the whole movement would die because they organized around top-down leaders.
i’m asking more specifically at how some of the changes these socialist states did aren’t inherently bad (Tanzania had 90% of children in primary school, and vastly reduced mortality rate of women), but that state forcing what can basically be described as single-family farms into villages (villagization) was detrimental because the farms themselves were never really absorbed into the state. they now had the sole production of the state on their backs but since they were never absorbed, the notion of African socialism under Ujamaa didn’t really work.
so i want to learn more about state socialism (and state capitalism since they are synonymous), but also i am in an african studies program so i don’t know if dense quantities economic analyses would likely be helpful. I want to understand the big picture and see how state socialism helped and or hurt the African peoples ranging from villagers and farmers and working class. i would also like some basic canonical texts understanding state socialism.
i’m very knowledgable about the large renaissance of 50s/60s African literature that existed when they were writing heavily about “buzzword” topics, books like “Pan Africanism or Communism?” or “African socialism: a radical reader!” type of stuff. I haven’t done through those yet, but it seems to be more socialist fused with traditionalist/communalist values than a critique of what would later be made which are the socialist states. i’m calling them failures because they involved the state and not because it was socialism. But also making the point that the ruler we use to measure differences can be very vague. It will yield positive results, for example, if we measured the improvement of that women’s mortality rate. But it would be poorer results if we’re measuring on how independent and empowered villagers were after statehood.
thanks, PM me please if anyone has questions
I am thinking of the case of the Partido por la Victoria del Pueblo (PVP) in Uruguay, which emerged from the especifist organization Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU). The PVP is now part of the Uruguayan Frente Amplio (Broad Front) political coalition. I am also thinking of Izquierda Libertaria (Libertarian Left) in Chile, a political party created by the OCL (Organización Comunista Libertaria). The OCL was a platformist/especifist organization that became a political party and helped form Chile's Frente Amplio before abandoning it to become independent.
Are these cases—where especifist anarchists build a political party maintaining anarchist principles and theory but abandon the dogma of anti-electoralism to become politically influential—still forms of anarchism? If not, what ideology do they represent? How can one name this phenomenon?
To be transparent, as an anarchist and a member of IL, I would theorize that anarchism has historically had tendencies that utilize institutions as a tactical and strategic tool, such as the Spanish libertarian possibilism tendency. Other cases that come to mind are Georges Fontenis and the FCL in France, which participated in elections, and Murray Bookchin's communalist/libertarian municipalist theory, which utilizes elections to achieve libertarian goals. This makes me think that for a long time, there have been anarchist theories and divisions within the ideology that aren't as cut and dried regarding the anti-electoral dogma.
I have been considering theorizing these deviations through the lens of political theory analysis. I am thinking of calling these anarchist experiences and theories "Institutionalist Anarchism," and categorizing the cases of the PVP and IL as "Post-Especifism," because these experiences are best understood as an evolution and reformation of especifist theory and praxis into a new form of libertarian organization.
There are admittedly, quite a few larpers in this sub, who turn curious yet hesitant sympathizers away from anarchism, if you really wanna get a taste of what anarchy would look like without having to read something as big as the conquest of bread, this video is great!
Considering that anarchy would not prefer ownership generally, how would something like games/gaming industry function in that world. I wonder if it would be more about community preservation, as already happens for older games and emulators?
Would like to know perspectives on this.
My sibling wants to start a cleaning business of sorts, and I would like to find a way to clean for my disabled neighbors for free or very low cost. My ideal would be to make a collective of people who share my passion, but I don't know of anyone in my area.
Sibling and I both use the title of anarchist, though we are also still learning. Me, especially.
My sibling lives with our parents (who are financially generous but verbally abusive and generally suffocating) and I live with my partner. Sib and I both work part time for just above minimum wage at different branches of a local grocery chain and we really hate it. It's sould crushing, pointless work that forces us to go specifically against our values.
I want to follow my passion of housekeeping for people who need more care than a traditional cleaner would do and/or can't afford a regular cleaning service, and sibling wants to do the admin work and find an income large enough to escape our parents and live on their own.
I want to explore all our options for finding a way to feed ourselves while living as close to our values as reality allows.
If I didn't have to worry about paying the bills I'd be offering my time to my community until my schedule was breaking at the seams, but I have to eat somehow and I'm lost on how to make these two things even slightly work together.
Tl;dr how do I do a "cleaning business" in an "anarchist way"?
What are the differences between Mutualism, Individualist and Anarcho-capitalism?
How do they differ from Anarcho-Syndicalism and Social Anarchism?
Do they have similarities based on the fact that those are also anarchistic ideas?
Just looking around here and this seems almost exactly like r/Marxism or r/communism in terms of what the ideology is
What are some of the notable differences between the two? And what happened to ancaps?
Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but since Anarchism is pretty cozy with Revolution, I was wondering if there were systemic analysis of Revolutions in general
Preferably something modern with a lot of discussion of evidence