An Anarchist FAQ

Writings by Anarcho

articles and essays on anarchism, anarchist history, marxism and current affairs as well as reviews

Articles and Reviews

  • Black Flag: Anarchist Review Summer 2024 issue now out

    The new issue of Black Flag: Anarchist Review is now available:

    https://www.blackflag.org.uk

    The main focus of this issue is Emma Goldman. While much, rightly, has been written about this stalwart of the movement for fifty years, it has all too often been focused on her life or her feminism. While this is understandable – her life was eventful (to say the least) and her feminism is important – this has led to a downplaying of her communist-anarchism. Here we seek to address this by means of a debunking of a deeply dishonest Leninist account of her life. This shows two things.

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  • Black Flag: Anarchist Review Spring 2024 issue now out

    The new issue of Black Flag: Anarchist Review is now available:

    https://www.blackflag.org.uk

    We cover two women who played key parts in British anarchism, albeit in different eras. Charlotte M. Wilson played a key role in the earliest days of the British anarchist movement. She was a co-founder with Kropotkin of Freedom in 1886, which she edited and wrote for. While she eventually dropped out of the movement, her contribution warrants remembering. Marie-Lousie Berneri likewise played a key role in the movement, this time in the late 1930s and 1940s. The daughter of Camillo Berneri, she helped with Spain and the World (later Revolt!, then War Commentary before becoming Freedom in 1945) and the rebirth of anarchism as an organised movement in Britain. Her early death was a tragic loss, as can be seen from the writings we include.

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  • The Trotskyist School of Falsification

    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)

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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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