Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism

Tao Te Ching (Le Guin Translation) : A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, by Laozi (Lao-Tzu)Look at it: nothing to see. Call it colorless. Listen to it: nothing to hear. Call it soundless. Reach for it: nothing to hold. Call it intangible. Triply undifferentiated, it merges into oneness, not bright above, not dark below. Never, oh! never can it be named. It reverts, it returns to unbeing. Call it the form of the unformed, the image of no image. Call it unthinkable thought. Face it: no face. Follow it: no end. Holding fast to the old Way, we can live in the present. Mindful of the ancient beginnings, we hold the thread of the Tao.

1978 ~ Utopia, Not Futurism : Why doing the impossible is the most rational thing we can do, by Murray Bookchin
On August 24, 1978, Murray Bookchin gave a lecture at the Toward Tomorrow Fair in Amherst, Massachusetts. Also speaking at that year’s gathering were several prominent thinkers, including R. Buckminster Fuller and Ralph Nader. In his speech, Bookchin argues against the ideology of futurism and for ecological utopianism. In the Q&A session, he points out that he is not against technology itself, he is against technocracy, and he also describes, in detail, his political vision for the future. The speech is surprisingly relevant in today’s context: it’s as if he predicted the rise of fascist ideology and lifeboat ethics in the 21st century, and it feels like a direct rebuttal of Elon Musk-esque technocratic futurism on both the right and the left. Because his speech is so applicable today, we decided to republish it here, making it accessible to a wider audience. It has been transcribed and edited lig... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Unity of Ideals and Practice, by Murray Bookchin
I Recently I have begun to encounter, especially among young people, individuals who call themselves “leftists” but who have little or no awareness of the most basic features of the Left’s longstanding analysis of capitalism, or of the history of the revolutionary movements that have stood in fundamental opposition to bourgeois society. It distresses me that the ideological contours that have long defined capitalism and the Left are being forgotten today, as well as the most critical insights of libertarian socialism and revolutionary anarchism. Given this spreading social amnesia, I find that before I can summarize my political and social ideals, I must briefly outline the trajectory of capitalist society and the responsibility of the revolutionary Left, since my own ideas are integrally embedded in the tradition of that Left. Certain basic concepts are fundamental to traditional leftists, especially to social anarchists, and when I... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Third Revolution : Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era, by Murray BookchinPART III. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Chapter 9. “A Kind of Revolution” The men and women who rallied to the Leveler cause in the late 1640s faded away with the rise of Cromwell’s interregnum. But their political ideal of “an agreement of the people acceptable to the general will,” as H.N. Brailsford observes, did not disappear. “It crossed the Atlantic ... and bore ripe fruit. Defeated in Europe, the English Revolution found its triumph and its culmination in America.” Until recently, there has been a tendency among historians to deprecate the migration of radical ideals to colonial America and the radicalism of the American Revolution generally. Its revolutionary character has been slighted by historians who treat it as a mere war for independence, a conservative movement to preserve existing political institutions, or a purely economic conflict between competing colonial interests and the...

1978 ~ The Spanish Anarchists : The Heroic Years, 1868–1936, by Murray BookchinIn late October 1868, Giuseppi Fanelli, a tall, heavily bearded Italian of about forty, arrived at Barcelona after a railroad journey from Geneva. It was Fanelli’s first visit to Spain. He had reached the city without incident and he would leave it, a few months later, ^without any interference by the Spanish authorities. There was nothing in his appearance that would have distinguished him from any other visiting Italian, except perhaps for his height and his intense prepossessing stature. But Giuseppi Fanelli was not an ordinary visitor to Spain. His brief journey was to have a far-reaching influence, providing the catalyst for what was not only the most widespread workers’ and peasants’ movement in modern Spain, but the largest Anarchist movement in modem Europe. For Fanelli was an experienced Italian revolutionary, a supporter of the Russian Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a highly gifted propagandist. His journey had been organized by Bakunin i...

Domestication and sedentization are not processes that were only imposed on “primitive” peoples; these processes occurred in Europe as well. Latin American nomads and European vagabonds experienced similar repression but by different means. Missions and prisons served similar functions: they settled the roamers and put them to work. Now, there are many all too familiar ways to regulate or fix movement. Here in the US, incarceration rates are skyrocketing. The computerization of biometrics is a new weapon in the State’s arsenal that greatly increases the accuracy with which they can identify human beings: this facilitates incarceration and immigration control. The above technologies and institutions of control share a common aim: to regulate movement and direct human action into the repetitive rotation of production and consumption. Domestication in Latin America Throughout Latin America during the colonial period Spanish style towns and... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

1891
Faith is that which invests life with meaning, that which gives strength and direction to life. Every living man discovers this meaning and lives upon it. Having failed to discover it, he dies. In his search, man avails himself of all that humanity has achieved. All that has been achieved by humanity is called revelation. Revelation is that which helps man to comprehend the meaning of life. Such is the relation of man to faith. What a wonderful thing, then! Men appear, who toil unceasingly to make other people enjoy just this and no other form or revelation; who cannot rest until others accept their, just their form of revelation, and who damn, execute, kill, as many as they can of the dissenters. Others do the same: damn, execute, and kill one another. At first it was amazing to me how such an evident absurdity, such an evident contradiction, failed to destroy faith itself. How could there remain people wh... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

1916 ~ the writings of Bruno Filippi
Translator’s Introduction The writings of Bruno Filippi offer something rare in anarchist writing — truly beautiful literature. I hope this comes across in my translations — where it does not, the fault is all mine. Filippi entered upon his brief life of revolt at the age of 15, in the midst of World War I, involving himself in anarchist anti-militarist activity. Several of his brief works reflect the dehumanizing effects of military life and participation in a slaughter that was qualitatively different from any war up to that time in the sheer capacity for destruction. One could not rightly speak of "savagery” in relation to this slaughter since its destructive capacity was the precise outcome of the technological progress of civilization. And at this time, some began to seriously question progress and civilization themselves. Among them were anarchists like Bruno Filippi and Renzo Novatore. In this light of this horrendous historical catacl... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

1988
This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author. GREEN PERSPECTIVES Newsletter of the Green Program Project A LEFT GREEN PERIODICAL P.O. Box 111 Burlington, VT 05402 No. 6, May 1988 Price:$1.50 The Crisis in the Ecology Movement by Murray Bookchin American ecology movements -- and particularly the American Greens -- are faced with a serious crisis of conscience and direction. Will ecologically oriented groups and the Greens become a movement that sees the roots of our ecological dislocations in social dislocations -- notably, in the domination of human by human whi... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

An Anti-Manifesto
Introduction We are at an impasse. The current politics of trans liberation have staked their claims on a redemptive understanding of identity. Whether through a doctor or psychologist’s diagnosis, or through a personal self affirmation in the form of a social utterance, we have come to believe that there is some internal truth to gender that we must divine. An endless set of positive political projects have marked the road we currently travel; an infinite set of pronouns, pride flags, and labels. The current movement within trans politics has sought to try to broaden gender categories, in the hope that we can alleviate their harm. This is naive. Judith Butler refers to gender as, “the apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative that gender assumes.” If the current liberal politics of our tra... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)