--New Perspectives in Libertarian Thought--
EDITOR: Murray Bookchin Vol. 1, No. 4 Price: 80 cents The American Crisis
To conceal real crises by creating specious ones is an old political trick, but the past year has seen it triumph with an almost classic example of text-book success.
The so-called "Iranian Crisis" and Russia's heavy-handed invasion of its Afghan satellite have completely deflected public attention from the deeper waters of American domestic and foreign policy. One would have to be blind not to see that the seizure of the American embassy in Teheran by a ragtail group of Maoist students spared both Khomeini and Carter a sha... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Anarchism: Arguments for and against
by Albert Meltzer
Table of Contents
IntroductionInalienable Tenets of AnarchismThe Class StruggleOrganization and AnarchismThe Role of an Anarchist in an Authoritarian SocietyBringing About the New SocietyThe Marxist Criticism of AnarchismThe Social-Democratic Critique of AnarchismThe Liberal-Democratic Objection to AnarchismThe Fascist Objection to AnarchismThe Average Person's Objection to Anarchism
Introduction
The Historical Background to Anarchism
It is not without interest that what might be called the anarchist
approach goes back into antiquity; nor that there is an ana (From : Hack.org.)
Introduction by Noam Chomsky "Notes on Anarchism" in For Reasons of State Noam Chomsky, 1970 Transcribed by rael@ll.mit.edu (Bill Lear) A French writer, sympathetic to anarchism, wrote in the 1890s that "anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything"---including, he noted those whose acts are such that "a mortal enemy of anarchism could not have done better."[1] There have been many styles of thought and action that have been referred to as "anarchist." It would be hopeless to try to encompass all of these conflicting tendencies in some general theory or ideology. And even if we proceed to extract from the history of libertarian thought a living, evolving tradition, as Daniel Guérin does in Anarchism, it remains difficult to formulate its doctrines as a specific and determinate theory of society and social change. The anarchist historian Rudolph Rocker, who presents a systematic conception of the development of anarchist th...
From: Peter Kropotkin, Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets. Roger N. Baldwin, editor. Vangaurd Press, Inc. 1927
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM: ITS BASIS AND PRINCIPLES
Section ISection IIAdditional Note to "Anarchist Communism"
I
Anarchism, the no-government system of socialism, has a double origin. It is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the economic and the political fields which characterize the nineteenth century, and especially its second part. In common with all socialists, the anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear; and that all requisites for production must, and will, become the common pr... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
The Nineteenth Centur.
No. CXXVI---August 1887.
The Coming Anarchy.
The views taken in the preceding article* as to the combination of efforts being the chief source of our wealth explain why more anarchists see in communism the only equitable solution as to the adequate remuneration of individual efforts. There was a time when a family engaged in agriculture, and supported by a few domestic trades, could consider the corn they raised and the plain woolen cloth they wove as production of their own and nobody else's labor. Even then such a view was not quite correct: there were forests cleared and roads built by common efforts; and even then the family had continually to apply for communal help, as it is still the case in so man... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
THE CONQUEST OF BREAD by P. Kropotkin PREFACE ONE of the current objections to Communism and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old, and yet it could never be realized. Schemes of ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece; later on, the early Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. Then, the same ideals were revived during the great English and French Revolutions; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. "And yet, you see," we are told, "how far away is still the realization of your schemes. Don't you think that there is some fundamental error in your understanding of human nature and its needs?" At first sight this objection seems very serious. However, the...
70 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.
THE DIRECT ACTION OF ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION
[Since this article was written Prince Kropotkin, whose efforts on behalf of the Russian people forty years ago resulted in his imprisonment in the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, has been incarcerated in the same prison by the accursed Bolshevists who now misrepresent that people. The Editor is unable to obtain any news of Prince Kropotkin, but there is only too much reason to fear that he has been murdered in the name of those whom he befriended.]
There can be no doubt that species may become greatly modified through the direct action of environment. I have some excuse for no... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
The text is from my copy of Peter Kropotkin, Ethics: Origins and Development, London: George E Harrap Co, Ltd. Ethics: Origin and Development by Peter Kropotkin Introduction by the Russian Editor "ETHICS" is the swan song of the great humanitarian scientist and revolutionist-anarchist, and constitutes, as it were, the crowning work and the résumé of all the scientific, philosophical, and sociological views of Peter Alekseyevich Kropotkin, at which he arrived in the course of his long and unusually rich life. Unfortunately, death came before he could complete his work, and, according to the will and desire of Peter Alekseyevich, the responsible task of preparing "Ethics" for the press fell upon me. In issuing the first volume of "Ethics", I feel the necessity of saying a few words to acquaint the reader with the history of this work. In his "Ethics" Kropotkin wished to give answers to the two fundamental pr...
The text is taken from my copy of FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS: or Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work, Thomas Nelson & Sons, London, Edinburgh, Dublin and New York, 1912. CHAPTER V. THE POSSIBILITIES Of AGRICULTURE (continued). Extension of market-gardcning and fruit growing: in France; in the United States --Culture under glass--Kitchen gardens under glass--Hothouse culture: in Guernsey and Jersey; in Belgium--Conclusion. ONE of the most interesting features of the present evolution of agriculture is the extension lately taken by intensive market-gardening of the same sort as has been described in the third chapter. What formerly was limited to a few hundreds of small gardens, is now spreading with an astonishing rapidity. In this country the area given to market-gardens, after having more than doubled within the years 1879 to 189...
First Study. Reaction Causes Revolution. 1. The Revolutionary Force It is an opinion generally held nowadays, among men of advanced views as well as among conservatives, that a revolution, boldly attacked at its incipiency, can be stopped, repressed, diverted or perverted; that only two things are needed for this, sagacity and power. One of the most thoughtful writers of today, M. Droz, of the Academie Francaise, has written a special account of the years of the reign of Louis XVI, during which, according to him, the Revolution might have been anticipated and prevented. And among the revolutionaries of the present, one of the most intelligent, Blanqui, is equally dominated by the idea that, given sufficient strength and skill, Power is able to lead the people whither it chooses, to crush the right, to bring to naught the spirit of revolution. The whole policy of the Tribune of Belle-Isle—I beg his fri...