Author Archives: jpeacott

You Always Act for Yourself

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“… since expropriation is a way of getting away from slavery individually, the risks have to be borne individually, as well, and comrades who practice expropriation for themselves lose every right – if such a right even exists for anarchists, and I don’t believe it – to claim the solidarity of the movement when they fall into misfortune.”

Brand (Enrico Arrigoni)

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I took this quotation of Enrico Arrigoni (aka Frank Brand) from an article he wrote called “The Right* to Idleness and Individual Reappropriation” that appeared in his publication Eresia di oggi e di domani (Heresies of Today and Tomorrow – published in the mid to late 1920s). In the article, he didn’t only attack the doctrine of the “dignity of labor” then popular in radical circles, but also any moralistic conception of solidarity. Continue reading →

The Drug War is Hell

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Legalization of possession and use of marijuana is spreading gradually from state to state, but this should not be taken as a sign that the drug warriors have declared a truce in their murderous attempts to control what people smoke, ingest or inject. They have simply conceded one battle in this war, one that was becoming harder and harder to justify to the people of this country whose extorted tax payments fund this misguided adventure. Just as re-legalization of alcohol after prohibition was repealed did not lead to deregulation and free individual choice in when, where, and how people were allowed to imbibe, now-legal marijuana use is and will be regulated, controlled, limited, and taxed by those who feel it is their responsibility—no, right—to tell the rest of us how to live. Continue reading →

Enemies

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I am not your ally. We are not comrades. Leftism is merely another authoritarian ideology. Your very attitudes preserve the hegemony of the totality. You may try to redirect blame away from yourself, saying that we need to unite to fight the “real enemy.” Just because your leftist management and control strategy lost, & did not succeed in its attempt to dominate class society, does not mean that I am sympathetic to you. Nor do I feel pity. Merely disgust. Continue reading →

Unsettling Science

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“In science, theories are always hypothetical and provisional and are a convenient method of grouping and linking known facts, as well as a useful instrument for research, for the discovery and interpretation of new facts; but they are not the truth.”

“The scientist makes use of hypotheses to work on, that is to say he makes certain assumptions which serve him as a guide and as a spur in his research, but he is not a victim of his imagination, nor does he allow familiarity with his assumptions to be hardened into a demonstrated truth, raising to a law, with arbitrary induction, every individual fact which serves his thesis.”

These quotations, taken from two articles written by Errico Malatesta in the journals Umanità Nova and Pensiero e Volontà in 1922 and 1924, respectively, resonate strongly with me when I consider what passes for science today. Continue reading →

ADDSMD: A Breakthrough Discovery in Psychiatry

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According to the American Psychiatric Association, a new mental disorder has been discovered that is proving to be the greatest breakthrough in psychiatry in decades. According to Dr Ima Schrinquac, “ADDSMD is a recently discovered disorder, added in the latest update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)” She went on to explain that ADDSMD stands for “Artificial Disorder Designed to Sell More Drugs.” Continue reading →

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 →

Nameless: An Egoist Critique of Identity

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Only when nothing is said about you and you are merely named, are you recognized as you. As soon as something is said about you, you are only recognized as that thing…  – Max Stirner

It’s amusing how often people confuse identity with individuality. Identity traces back to a Latin word meaning “sameness.” And sameness implies the existence of something with which I can be the same.

It is certainly possible to conceive of individuals as identical atoms bashing into each other—marxists like to assume that this is what individualists are talking about—but even atoms only become identical when you or I conceive of them as atoms, giving them an identity. Atomization is a process that has its basis in the denial of my unique individuality, and identification plays a part in this process. Continue reading →