A review of Victor Serge’s biography of Trotsky showing its limitations and revisionism. It shows that Serge’s account, like Trotskyist accounts in general, is at odds with what actually happened in Russia and presents an at times wishful thinking account of Trotsky’s actual ideas and activities. It appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review No. 79 (Spring 2020)
(more…)Category: Review
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Review: Anarchists Never Surrender by Victor Serge
A review of a collection of new translations by Victor Serge (1890-1947) which cover his individualist-anarchist and Bolshevik periods. It shows why Serge is not someone radicals today should seek to imitate, as his libertarian-Marxist period was too little, too late. It appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review No. 74 (Summer 2018)
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Victor Serge: The Worst of the Anarchists
A review of various books by or about Victor Serge, the individualist-anarchist who turned Bolshevik. It discusses how he turned from an elitist individualist to an elitist Leninist and why his Memoirs, while an interesting book, is unreliable when it comes to his actual views between 1919 and 1929. While routinely presented by Leninists as amongst the “best of the Anarchists” (and so should be followed into Bolshevism), in reality he was amongst the worst. It was originally written for Anarchist Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 (Autumn 2014) and this, full, version appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review No. 61 (Winter 2014)
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Lucy Parsons: American Anarchist (revisited)
A review of Carolyn Ashbaugh’s Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary which debunks her claims that Lucy Parsons was not an anarchist. It also refutes her attempt to protray Emma Goldman as some sort of lifestyle anarchist, showing how she and Parsons shared a similar communist anarchist perspective. It appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 2 No. 1 (Spring 2022)
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The Poverty of (Marx’s) Philosophy
A review of Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy which indicates various distortions of Proudhon’s work. It also discusses how Marx in 1867 applied the methodology he had attacked Proudhon for using twenty years earlier. It appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review R No. 70 (Summer 2017)
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