Monthly Archives: August 2014

To Market, To Market

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In a review of anchorage anarchy in a recent edition of Anarchy, A Journal of Desire Armed, I am described by the author as a “non-anti-capitalist anarchist.” Around the same time I read this article, I also received a letter from a contributor to aa in which I was called to task for my use of the word market to describe the sort of economic relations I think would best serve free people.   While the Anarchy writer did not elaborate on why he chose the description he did, my correspondent did go on to say that he thinks “free people would determine the means of exchange/sharing/distribution that is most suitable for them & it would tend to be disorganized and fluid, where market implies a more structured approach.” Continue reading →

Heroes and Villains: A Review of Kontrrazvedka by Vyacheslav Azarov

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Anarchists can’t seem to give up their heroes, no matter how badly they are shown to have behaved. When anarchists rule or kill or silence or tax others there is always some justification for these actions. Often the excuse is wartime conditions, but in other cases the misdeeds are seen as simple mistakes by well-intended class warriors. Apparently anarchists, especially anarchist leaders, are not to be held to the same standards as mere mortals or the “class enemy.” Continue reading →

On The Platform

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I am not doubting the sincerity of the anarchist proposals of those Russian comrades.  They want to bring about anarchist communism and are seeking the means of doing so as quickly as possible.  But it is not enough to want something; one also has to adopt suitable means; to get to a certain place one must take the right path or end up somewhere else.  Their organization, being typically authoritarian, far from helping to bring about the victory of anarchist communism, to which they aspire, could only falsify the anarchist spirit and lead to consequences that go against their intentions.

In fact, their General Union appears to consist of so many partial organizations with secretariats which ideologically direct the political and technical work; and to coordinate the activities of all the member organizations there is a Union Executive Committee whose task is to carry out the decisions of the Union and to oversee the ‘ideological and organizational conduct of the organizations in conformity with the ideology and general strategy of the Union.’

Is this anarchist?  This, in my view, is a government and a church…The spirit, the tendency remains authoritarian and the educational effect would remain anti-anarchist.

My Anarchism

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In 1947, at 17 years of age, I began to call myself an anarchist. Having spent some three years in the socialist movement I naturally conceived of anarchism as a form of communism. I exchanged Bukharin for Bakunin, Kautsky for Kropotkin and Marx for Malatesta, but the goal of common ownership remained the same, even if the route was now a different one. And it was this goal to which I held for about the next ten years, despite changes in emphasis and tactics. Continue reading →