This is a write up of a talk I gave in Glasgow in 2018 entitled Now and After: What would Anarchy be like and how we create the new world by fighting the current one. It summarises anarchist ideas of what a free society would be like and how we get there. As with my previous write-ups, this reflects more what I intended to say rather than what was said. Hopefully it will be close enough. For more details of the ideas raised here, see Section I of An Anarchist FAQ.
(more…)Category: Anarchist History
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Voltairine De Cleyre: Her revolutionary ideas and legacy
A review and evaluation of Voltairine De Cleyre’s politics, showing why modern radicals would gain from reading her. It uses three recently published books of her writings to discuss her ideas and their evolution from an individual to a communist anarchist and how it related to changes in North American anarchism. An important figure in Anarchist history whose ideas are of interest today, particularly as we still suffer from the patriarchy, capitalism and statism she opposed.
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Louise Michel: “If you are not cowards, kill me!”
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A review of a book on that remarkable anarchist activist, Louise Michel. Sadly marred by an obvious, and utterly unnecessary, bias for Marxism, it fails to do justice to her ideas and her life. -
Review: Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis
A review of the book Albert Parson produced while in prison awaiting execution after the Haymarket police riot of 1886. An essential introduction to the ideas of the Chicago Anarchists.
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Russia 1905
Overview of the 1905 Russian revolution, plus an analysis of why Rosa Luxemburg’s account of the mass strike is wrong about anarchism.
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