Preface Preface There has recently been a renewal of interest in anarchism. Books, pamphlets, and anthologies are being devoted to it. It is doubtful whether this literary effort is really very effective. It is difficult to trace the outlines of anarchism. Its master thinkers rarely condensed their ideas into systematic works. If, on occasion, they tried to do so, it was only in thin pamphlets designed for propaganda and popularization in which only fragments of their ideas can be observed. Moreover, there are several kinds of anarchism and many variations within the thought of each of the great libertarians. Rejection of authority and stress on the priority of individual judgment make it natural for libertarians to "profess the faith of anti dogmatism." "Let us not become the leaders of a new religion," Proudhon wrote to Marx, "even were it to be the religion of logic and reason." It follows that the views of the libertarians are more varied, more...
From
the upcoming "No Gods, No Masters" edited by Daniel Guerin, to
be published by AK Press the summer of 1997
Anarchists Behind Bars (Summer 1921)
by Gaston Leval
Once I discovered that there were
so many of our comrades in prison, I arranged, together with the French
syndicalist delegates to make overtures to Dzerzhinsky, the People's Commissar
for the Interior, implicitly obedient to Lenin. Being wary of me, my fellow
delegates chose Joaquin Maurin to speak on behalf of the CNT delegation.
Maurin reported back on their first audience. At the sight of the list
of the prisoners whose release was being sought, Dzerzhinsky blanched,
then went red with fury, arguing that these men were counterrevolutionaries
in ca... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
[Originally published in 1938 by Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd] Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes; The Proletariat and the Beginning of the Modern Labor Movement; The Forerunners of Syndicalism; The Objectives of Anarcho-Syndicalism; The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism; The Evolution of Anarcho-Syndicalism. 1. Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes Anarchism versus economic monopoly and state power; Forerunners of modern Anarchism; William Godwin and his work on Political Justice; P.J. Proudhon and his ideas of political and economic decentralization; Max Stirner's work, The Ego and Its Own; M. Bakunin the Collectivist and founder of the Anarchist movement; P. Kropotkin the exponent of Anarchist Communism and the philosophy of Mutual Aid; Anarchism and revolution; Anarchism a synthesis of Socialism and Liberalism; Anarchism versus economic materialism and Dictatorship; Anarchism and the state; Anarchism a tendency of his...
ARE THERE NEW FIELDS FOR ANARCHIST ACTIVITY?
By Max Nettlau
Published in Mother Earth on Nov. 5, 1907 in London by Int. Instituut Soc. Geschlodenis Amsterdam
I HAVE often wondered why, with millions of people taking part in progressive and labor movements of all kinds, comparatively few accept Anarchism fully as we do. What is better known than the exploitation of labor by capital, the oppression of the individual by the State, to the student the least interested in social matters and to the practical observer of everyday life? Again, if Anarchist propaganda has not yet touched every remote place in all countries, there are numerous localities where it has been carried on for a generation and more, and even there it ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
The text is from my copy of Alexander Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925. Page numbers are in the source code. CHAPTER XIV ON THE LATVIAN BORDER I Petrograd, March 15.---I received a message from Tchicherin, informing me that a thousand American deportees had arrived in Libau and were to reach Russia on March 22. A committee was to be formed, and arrangements made for their reception. I had long ago suggested the necessity of a permanent organization for this purpose, because exiles were expected from different countries. So far nothing had been done, but now instructions from Moscow hastened matters. Mme. Ravitch, Commissar of Public Safety in the, Petrograd District, called a conference at which a Deportees' Commission was decided upon. I was appointed Chairman of the Reception Committee, and...
CHAPTER 5 Our Union on the March STRIKERS CROWDED THE CORIDOR outside the hearing room in the Los Angeles City Hall on October 31, opening day of the arbitration proceedings, ready to testify when called. Vise-President Feinberg and Harry Sherr, attorney for the ILGWU, presented our case. Feinberg told of a whispering campaign against the union, by employers who contended it did not represent the dressmakers for whom it professed to speak. Arthur Booth, executive secretary of the manufacturers' association, asserted that "there has been no clash between the employers and employes in the dress industry on wages, hours, or working conditions." Our witnesses testified that the employers were operating a blacklist; had dismissed workers for discussing unionism and attending union meetings; and had shown marked favoritism to nonunion workers in an effort to break the union...
This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author.
GREEN PERSPECTIVES
Price:$1.00
A LEFT GREEN PUBLICATION Number 23 June 1991
P.O. Box 111Burlington, VT 05402
A Critique of the Draft Program of the Left Green Network
by Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl
Editors note: The Left Green Network is in the process of writing, developing and debating its program. The draft proposal for the program was published in the April/May 1991 issue of the Network's organizing bulletin, Left Green Notes, number 7. The following critique was written in response to that program. The proposed program will be debated at the upcoming continental conference of the Network, over the July 4 weekend in Chicago... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Founding of the Worker's International
by Mikhail Bakunin 1814-1876
From "The Political Philosophy of Bakunin"
by G.P. Maximoff
1953, The Free Press, NY
Awakening of Labor on the Eve of the International. In 1863 and 1864, the years of the founding of the International, in nearly all of the countries of Europe, and especially those where modern industry had reached its highest development - in England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland - two facts made themselves manifest, facts which facilitated and practically made mandatory the creation of the International. The first was the simultaneous awakening in all the countries of the consciousness, courage, and spirit of the workers, following twelve or even... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
CHAPTER III Off to Work; The Guy They All Dread; Early Days; Ebbtide; Attempts on Dictators; Around the Left Off to Work Meanwhile I had started work, not fit for anything much, at the age of 17, for the gas company, who paid the magnificent sum of 17/6 per week (75p in today's coinage). Even so it was reckoned to be a prize at a time when office jobs started at around 12/6d per week. It's no good saying things were a lot less then; they weren't, one simply had and did less. I had a friend in the company, George Plume, who had started there a year or so before. I had known him since I was 11, he was a little older and had been a form or two higher at school, and we had been friendly until he joined the Young Communist League. Now we resumed contact, I finally wore him down on Stalinism, and he joined the ILP. We tried to organize the gas company: its fitters and engineers were unionized but not its clerical staff. W...
Living My Life by Emma Goldman Volume one New York: Alfred A Knopf Inc.,1931. Chapter 25 IT WAS BITTER HARD TO FACE LIFE ANEW. IN THE STRESS OF THE past weeks I had forgotten that I should again have to take up the struggle for existence. It was doubly imperative; I needed forgetfulness. Our movement had lost its appeal for me; many of its adherents filled me with loathing. They had been flaunting anarchism like a red cloth before a bull, but they ran to cover at his first charge. I could no longer work with them. Still more harrowing was the gnawing doubt of the values I had so fervently believed in. No, I could not continue in the movement. I must first take stock of my own self. Intensive work in my profession, I felt, was the only refuge. It would fill the void and make me forget. I had lost my identity; I had assumed a fictitious nam...