Our Best Posts (Addictions, Anarchism, Atheism, Baseball, Capitalism)

We hit 100,000 views a few days ago, and to celebrate (if that’s the right word) we’re listing the best posts we’ve published, divided by category. Here’s the first installment.

Addictions

• Alcoholics Anonymous Does More Harm Than Good
• Alcoholics Anonymous Is Not Effective
• Alcoholics Anonymous Is Religious, Not Spiritual

Anarchism

• Anarchist Science Fiction: Essential Novels
• Anarchism: What It Is and What It Isn’t
• An Anarchist Bibliography
• The Most Effective Political Approach: Nonviolent Direct Action
• Don’t Call Them Libertarians

Atheism

• Syllogism of the Day
• Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
• Notable Atheist Science Fiction Novels
• Arguments for God’s Existence
• Faith: A False Virtue
• Which Is Worse, Islam or Christianity?

Baseball

• A Favorite Baseball Anecdote
• RIP Yogi Berra — some favorite quotes
• Annual Lee Elia Appreciation Day

Capitalism

• Meme of the Day
• Love It or Leave It
• Inverse Relationship
• Wage Labor
• Self-Made Man
• Prostitution

This is the first of several “best of” posts we’ll be running over the next week or two. The following installment will cover several categories: Economics (much more on capitalism there), Gardening, Interviews, and Journalism. We’ll also be putting up multiple installments devoted purely to humor, because humor posts comprise by far the largest category on this blog — over 500 total, out of the roughly 1,500 we’ve put up so far.

 

A Blast from the Past: Anarchism: What It Is and What It Isn’t

(For the last couple of months we’ve been running the best posts from years past, posts that will be new to most of our subscribers. We’re just starting to run blasts from the past from 2014 — this is the first — and will be posting them for the next few months; we’ll intersperse them with new material.)

Anarchism: What It Is and What It Isn’t

(from the new [2015] Anarchist Cookbook, by Keith McHenry with Chaz Bufe, Introduction by Chris Hedges)

by Chaz Bufe

There are many popular misconceptions about anarchism, and because of them a great many people dismiss anarchists and anarchism out of hand.

Misconceptions abound in the mass media, where the term “anarchy” is commonly used as a synonym for “chaos,” and where terrorists, no matter what their political beliefs or affiliations, are often referred to as “anarchists.” As well, when anarchism is mentioned, it’s invariably presented as merely a particularly mindless form of youthful rebellion. These misconceptions are, of course, also widespread in the general public, which by and large allows the mass media to do what passes for its thinking.

Worse, some who call themselves “anarchists” don’t even know the meaning of the term. These people fall, in general, into two classes. The first, as the great Italian anarchist Luigi Fabbri pointed out nearly a century ago in Influencias burguesas sobre el anarquismo, consists of those who are attracted to the lies in the mass media. By and large, these people are simply looking for a glamorous label for selfish, antisocial behavior. The good news is that most of them eventually mature and abandon what they consider “anarchism.” The bad news is that while they’re around they tend to give anarchism a very bad name. As Fabbri put it:

[These are] persons who are not repelled by the absurd, but who, on the contrary, engage in it. They are attracted to projects and ideas precisely because they are absurd; and so anarchism comes to be known precisely for the illogical character and ridiculousness which ignorance and bourgeois calumny have attributed to anarchist doctrines.¹

The second class consists of those who equate anarchism with some pet ideology having essentially nothing to do with anarchism. In modern times, the most prominent of these mislabeled beliefs have been primitivism and amoral egoism. Again, the identification of such beliefs with anarchism tends to give anarchism a bad name, because of, on the one hand, the absurdity of primitivism and, on the other, the obvious antisocial nature of amoral egotism. To put this another way, the identification of anarchism with chaos, mindless rebellion, absurdities (such as primitivism), and antisocial attitudes and behaviors (such as amoral egoism) has three primary undesirable effects: 1) it allows people to easily dismiss anarchism and anarchists; 2) it makes it much more difficult to explain anarchism to them, because they already think that they know what it is and have rejected it; and 3) it attracts a fair number of what Fabbri calls “empty headed and frivolous types,” and occasionally outright sociopaths, whose words and actions tend to further discredit anarchism.

So, if we’re ever to get anywhere, we need to make plain what anarchism is and what it isn’t. First, let’s deal with the misconceptions.

What Anarchism Isn’t

Anarchism is not terrorism. An overwhelming majority of anarchists have always rejected terrorism, because they’ve been intelligent enough to realize that means determine ends, that terrorism is inherently vanguardist, and that even when “successful” it almost always leads to bad results. The anonymous authors of You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship: The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism put it like this:

You can’t blow up a social relationship. The total collapse of this society would provide no guarantee about what replaced it. Unless a majority of people had the ideas and organization sufficient for the creation of an alternative society, we would see the old world reassert itself because it is what people would be used to, what they believed in, what existed unchallenged in their own personalities.

Proponents of terrorism and guerrillaism are to be opposed because their actions are vanguardist and authoritarian, because their ideas, to the extent that they are substantial, are wrong or unrelated to the results of their actions (especially when they call themselves libertarians or anarchists), because their killing cannot be justified, and finally because their actions produce either repression with nothing in return, or an authoritarian regime.²

Decades of government and corporate slander cannot alter this reality: the overwhelming majority of anarchists reject terrorism for both practical and ethical reasons. In the late 1990s, Time magazine called Ted Kaczynski “the king of the anarchists”; but that doesn’t make it so. Time‘s words are just another typical, perhaps deliberately dishonest, attempt to tar all anarchists with the terrorist brush.

This is not to say that armed resistance is never appropriate. Clearly there are situations in which one has little choice, as when facing a dictatorship that suppresses civil liberties and prevents one from acting openly, which has happened repeatedly in many countries. Even then, armed resistance should be undertaken reluctantly and as a last resort, because violence is inherently undesirable due to the suffering it causes; because it provides repressive regimes excuses for further repression; because it provides them with the opportunity to commit atrocities against civilians and to blame those atrocities on their “terrorist” opponents; and because, as history has shown, the chances of success are very low.

Even though armed resistance may sometimes be called for in repressive situations, it’s a far different matter to succumb to the romance of the gun and to engage in urban guerrilla warfare in relatively open societies in which civil liberties are largely intact and in which one does not have mass popular support at the start of one’s violent campaign. Violence in such situations does little but drive the public into the “protective” arms of the government; narrow political dialogue (tending to polarize the populace into pro- and anti-guerrilla factions); turn politics into a spectator sport for the vast majority of people³; provide the government with the excuse to suppress civil liberties; and induce the onset of repressive regimes “better” able to handle the “terrorist” problem than their more tolerant predecessors. It’s also worth mentioning that the chances of success of such violent, vanguardist campaigns are microscopic. They are simply arrogant, ill-thought-out roads to disaster.⁴

Anarchism is not primitivism. In recent decades, groups of quasi-religious mystics have begun equating the primitivism they advocate (rejection of science, rationality, and technology—often lumped together under the blanket term, “technology”) with anarchism.⁵ In reality, the two have nothing to do with each other, as we’ll see when we consider what anarchism actually is—a set of philosophical/ethical precepts and organizational principles designed to maximize human freedom. For now, suffice it to say that the elimination of technology advocated by primitivist groups would inevitably entail the deaths of literally billions of human beings in a world utterly dependent upon interlocking technologies for everything from food production/delivery to communications to medical treatment. This fervently desired outcome, the elimination of technology, could only come about through means which are the absolute antithesis of anarchism: the use of coercion and violence on a mass scale, as it’s inconceivable that a majority of human beings would voluntarily give up such things as running water, sewer systems, modern medicine, electric lights, and warm houses in the winter.⁶

Anarchism is not chaos; Anarchism is not rejection of organization. This is another popular misconception, repeated ad nauseam by the mass media and by anarchism’s political foes. Even a brief look at the works of anarchism’s leading theoreticians and writers confirms that this belief is in error. Over and over in the writings of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rocker, Ward, Bookchin, et al., one finds not a rejection of organization, but rather a preoccupation with it—a preoccupation with how society should be organized in accord with the anarchist principles of individual freedom and social justice. For a century and a half now, anarchists have been arguing that coercive, hierarchical organization (as embodied in government and corporations) is not equivalent to organization per se (which they regard as necessary), and that coercive organization should be replaced by decentralized, nonhierarchical organization based on voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. This is hardly a rejection of organization.

Anarchism is not amoral egoism. As does any avant garde social movement, anarchism attracts more than its share of flakes, parasites, and outright sociopaths, persons simply looking for a glamorous label to cover their often-pathological selfishness, their disregard for the rights and dignity of others, and their pathetic desire to be the center of attention. These individuals tend to give anarchism a bad name, because even though they have very little in common with actual anarchists—that is, persons concerned with ethical behavior, social justice, and the rights of both themselves and others—they’re often quite exhibitionistic, and their disreputable actions sometimes come into the public eye. To make matters worse, these exhibitionists sometimes publish their self-glorifying views and deliberately misidentify those views as “anarchist.” To cite an example, the publisher of a pretentiously (sub)titled American “anarchist” journal recently published a book by a fellow egoist consisting primarily of ad hominem attacks on actual anarchists, knowing full well that the “anarchist” author of the book is a notorious police narcotics informant who has on a number of occasions ratted out those he’s had disputes with to government agencies. This police informer’s actions—which, revealingly, he’s attempted to hide—are completely in line with his ideology of amoral egoism (“post-left anarchism”), but they have nothing to do with actual anarchism. Such amoral egoists may (mis)use the label, but they’re no more anarchists than the now-defunct German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was democratic or a republic.

The full absurdity of identifying amoral egoism—essentially “I’ll do what I damn well please and fuck everybody else”—with anarchism will become apparent in short order when we’ll consider what anarchism actually is.

Anarchism is not “Libertarianism.” Until relatively recently, the very useful term “libertarian” was used worldwide as a synonym for “anarchist.” Indeed, it was used exclusively in this sense until the 1970s when, in the United States, it was appropriated by the grossly misnamed Libertarian Party.

This party has almost nothing to do with anarchist concepts of liberty, especially the concepts of equal freedom and positive freedom—that is, access to the resources necessary to the freedom to act. (Equal freedom and positive freedom are discussed in the following section of this essay.) Instead, this “Libertarian” party concerns itself exclusively with the negative freedoms, pretending that liberty exists only in the negative sense, while it simultaneously revels in the denial of equal positive freedom to the vast majority of the world’s people.

These “Libertarians” not only glorify capitalism, the mechanism that denies both equal freedom and positive freedom to the vast majority, but they also wish to retain the coercive apparatus of the state while eliminating its social welfare functions—hence widening the rift between rich and poor, and increasing the freedom of the rich by diminishing that of the poor (while keeping the boot of the state firmly on their necks). Thus, in the United States, the once exceedingly useful term “libertarian” has been hijacked by egotists who are in fact enemies of liberty in the full sense of the word, and who have very little in common with anarchists.

This is what anarchism isn’t.

What Anarchism Is

In its narrowest sense, anarchism is simply the rejection of the state, the rejection of coercive government. Under this extremely narrow definition, even such apparent absurdities as “anarcho-capitalism” and religious anarchism are possible.⁷

But most anarchists use the term “anarchism” in a much broader sense, defining it as the rejection of coercion and domination in all forms. So, most anarchists reject not only coercive government, but also religion and capitalism, which they see as other forms of the twin evils, domination and coercion. They reject religion because they see it as the ultimate form of domination, in which a supposedly all-powerful god hands down “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” to its “flock.” They likewise reject capitalism because it’s designed to produce rich and poor and because it’s designed to produce a system of domination in which some give orders and others have little choice but to take them. For similar reasons, on a personal level almost all anarchists reject sexism, racism, and homophobia—all of which produce artificial inequality, and thus domination.

To put this another way, anarchists believe in freedom in both its negative and positive senses. In this country, freedom is routinely presented only in its negative sense, that of being free from restraint. Hence most people equate freedom only with such things as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of (or from) religion. But there’s also a positive aspect of freedom, an aspect which anarchists almost alone insist on.⁸

That positive aspect is what Emma Goldman called “the freedom to.” And that freedom, the freedom of action, the freedom to enjoy or use, is highly dependent upon access to the world’s resources. Because of this the rich are in a very real sense free to a much greater degree than the rest of us. To cite an example in the area of free speech, Bill Gates could easily buy dozens of daily newspapers or television stations to propagate his views and influence public opinion. How many working people could do the same? How many working people could afford to buy a single daily newspaper or a single television station? The answer is obvious. Working people cannot do such things; instead, we’re reduced to producing ‘zines with a readership of a few hundred persons or putting up pages on the Internet in our relatively few hours of free time.

Examples of the greater freedom of the rich abound in daily life. To put this in general terms, because they do not have to work, the rich not only have far more money (that is, access to resources) but also far more time to pursue their interests, pleasures, and desires than do the rest of us. To cite a concrete example, the rich are free to send their children to the best colleges employing the best instructors, which the rest of us simply can’t afford to do; if we can afford college at all, we make do with community and state colleges employing slave-labor “adjunct faculty” and overworked, underpaid graduate students. Once in college, the children of the rich are entirely free to pursue their studies, while most other students must work at least part time to support themselves, which deprives them of many hours which could be devoted to study. If you think about it, you can easily find additional examples of the greater freedom of the rich in the areas of medical care, housing, nutrition, travel, etc., etc.—in fact, in virtually every area of life.

This greater freedom of action for the rich comes at the expense of everyone else, through the diminishment of everyone else’s freedom of action. There is no way around this, given that freedom of action is to a great extent determined by access to finite resources. Anatole France well illustrated the differences between the restrictions placed upon the rich and the poor when he wrote, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

Because the primary goal of anarchism is the greatest possible amount of freedom for all, anarchists insist on equal freedom in both its negative and positive aspects—that, in the negative sense, individuals be free to do whatever they wish as long as they do not harm or directly intrude upon others; and, in the positive sense, that all individuals have equal freedom to act, that they have equal access to the world’s resources.

Anarchists recognize that absolute freedom is an impossibility, that amoral egoism ignoring the rights of others would quickly devolve into a war of all against all. What we argue for is that everyone have equal freedom from restraint (limited only by respect for the rights of others) and that everyone have as nearly as possible equal access to resources, thus ensuring equal (or near-equal) freedom to act.

This is anarchism in its theoretical sense.

In Spain, Cuba, and a few other countries there have been serious attempts to make this theory reality through the movement known as anarcho-syndicalism. The primary purpose of anarcho-syndicalism is the replacement of coercive government by voluntary cooperation in the form of worker-controlled unions coordinating the entire economy. This would not only eliminate the primary restraint on the negative freedoms (government), but would also be a huge step toward achieving positive freedom. The nearest this vision came to fruition was in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939, when huge areas of Spain, including its most heavily industrialized region, came under the control of the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. George Orwell describes this achievement in Homage to Catalonia:

The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was in full swing. . . . the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the anarchists; . . . Every shop and café had an inscription saying it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-workers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. . . . The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. . . . All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.

This is anarchism. And Orwell was right—it is worth fighting for.⁹
1. Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism, by Luigi Fabbri. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2001, p. 16.

2. You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 1998, p. 20.

3. It may be that now due to apathy, but in violent/repressive situations other options are cut off for almost everyone not directly involved in armed resistance.

4. For further discussion of this matter, see You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship: The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism and Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism.

5. Ted Kaczynski is in some ways quite typical of this breed of romantic. He differs from most of them in that he acted on his beliefs (albeit in a cowardly, violent manner) and that he actually lived a relatively primitive existence in the backwoods of Montana—unlike most of his co-religionists, who live comfortably in urban areas and employ the technologies they profess to loathe.

6. For further discussion of this topic, see Anarchism vs. Primitivism, by Brian Oliver Sheppard. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2003. See also the “Primitive Thought” appendix to Listen Anarchist!, by Chaz Bufe. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 1998.

7. Indeed, there have been a fairly large number of admirable religious anarchists, individuals such as Leo Tolstoy and Dorothy Day (and the members of her Catholic Worker groups, such as Ammon Hennacy), though to most anarchists the advocacy of freedom on Earth while bowing to a heavenly tyrant (no matter how imaginary) seems an insupportable contradiction.

To the best of my knowledge there have been no such shining examples of anarcho-capitalists other than Karl Hess.

8. To be fair, marxists also tend to emphasize positive freedom, but for the most part they’re also curiously insensitive, and often downright hostile, to “negative” freedom—the freedom from restraint (especially when they have the guns and goons to do the restraining).

9. Of course, this discussion of anarchism is necessarily schematic, given that this pamphlet is intended as an introductory 10-minute read. For elaboration upon these themes, see Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism, by Rudolf Rocker; What Is Communist Anarchism?, by Alexander Berkman (republished by AK Press as What Is Anarchism?); Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow, by Peter Kropotkin; and Anarchy in Action, by Colin Ward.

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• Peter Kropotkin: The father of Russian Anarchism
• Anarchy – AWESOME Speech
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• On Fascism: One Anarchist’s Response to CrimethInc’s Podcast #11

Death of a Dictator

 

by Chaz Bufe, publisher See Sharp Press

It’s time to speak ill of the dead.  It’s been time for nearly a century. Since 1918, the left in both the U.S. and Europe has had a dictator-worship problem. First it was Lenin; then it was (yes) Stalin; then Mao; most recently the dictator of choice has been Fidel Castro.

To illustrate the depth and nature of this problem, let me recount an incident from Cuba in the 1960s. In the 1970s, a maoist friend told me about his experiences there as part of a Venceremos Brigade a decade earlier. (Venceremos Brigades were bands of American leftists who traveled to Cuba to work in the cane fields in support of “the revolution.”) At one point, Fidel himself showed up where they were working in the fields. My friend told me that the reaction of his fellow brigadistas was like that of 14-year-olds at a Beatles concert.

Since then, the American left in large part has continued to idolize Castro and his Stalin-admirer cohort, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, overlooking their  crimes. We’ll get to those crimes shortly, but let’s first speak of Castro’s, and his “revolution’s,” achievements. During his half-century reign, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Communist Party achieved the following:

• The literacy rate in Cuba in Cuba went from approximately 70% (figures vary) in 1959 to an estimated 96% today, thanks to the Cuban government’s literacy campaigns and universal education for those aged 6 to 16.
• Cuba has universal, free medical care. One example of its success is that infant mortality in Cuba fell from 37.3 per 1,000 live births in 1959 to 4.3 per thousand today. (In contrast, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. is 5.8 per 1,000 live births today.)
• Higher education in Cuba is free for most Cubans.
• There is remarkably little street crime in Cuba.
• Every Cuban adult is guaranteed a low paying job, with pay averaging about $20 a month.
• The Castro regime did show that a Latin American regime can defy the United States government (and the corporations it serves) and survive.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Well, consider this:

• Freedom of speech does not exist in Cuba, nor do the other freedoms listed in the U.S. Bill of Rights. Since its inception, the “revolutionary” Castro regime has jailed opponents for exercising their freedoms of speech and assembly. Human Rights Watch notes: “Many of the abusive tactics developed during his [Fidel Castro’s] time in power – including surveillance, beatings, arbitrary detention, and public acts of repudiation – are still used by the Cuban government.”
• All media outlets (newspapers, magazines, book publishers, radio stations, television stations) are controlled by the Castro regime, and access to the Internet is tightly restricted.
• Cuba is a one-party state.
• In its first four-plus decades in power (ending in 2003), the Castro regime executed hundreds if not thousands of its political opponents. Amnesty International estimates that that regime executed 216 political opponents between 1959 and 1987. Other estimates run up well into the thousands.
• The Cuban government maintains a surveillance network in every neighborhood in Cuba, the so-called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs — more accurately, Committees for the Defense of the Regime), which not only spy upon residents, but have considerable control over their lives. As an example, The CDRs can ban political dissidents from even applying to institutions of higher learning.
• One of the first things the Castro regime did when it took power was to destroy independent unions, either jailing or driving into exile unionists who opposed its takeover. For over half a century, all unions in Cuba have been controlled by the government. (See Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement, by Frank Fernández. Full disclosure: I translated and edited the book.)
• There is no workers’ control, no workplace democracy in Cuba. All workplaces are tightly controlled by government apparatchiks.
• The Cuban government denies its citizens the right to travel, the right to emigrate. Since 1959, over 1.5 million Cubans have fled the country (current population 11 to 12 million). At least hundreds of thousands fled on rickety boats and rafts, and at absolute minimum thousands of men, women, and children died in the crossing. The actual figure is likely well up into the tens of thousands. No one really knows.

Since Castro’s death last week, the American left has, by and large, continued to sing Fidel Castro’s praises. To cite but one example, a few days ago Amy Goodman, on her generally excellent “Democracy Now” broadcast, devoted a full hour (bar the first few minutes devoted to news) to Castro. There were a few seconds (considerably under a minute) near the start devoted  to generalized mention of the repressive nature of the regime, but there was no mention whatsoever in the rest of the hour of any of the crimes listed above. It was largely a love letter to Castro.

One might mention that many antiauthoritarian Latin American leftists and anarchists deeply resent the largely uncritical support given Castro (and until his death Hugo Chávez in Venezuela) by the American left. They see it as a betrayal of principles — and themselves — and consider it utterly hypocritical, especially when coming from those who loudly proclaim their allegiance to human freedom, human rights — in the United States, but not Cuba (or Venezuela). They believe that the typical leftist refrain, “Well, we wouldn’t want that repressive system here, but the Cuban people are better off for it,” is grossly patronizing to those who are the victims of repression and those who struggle against it.

They have a point. If you believe in human freedom, in civil liberties, you believe in them everywhere, and you support all those struggling against repression. You’re either for freedom of speech or against it. You don’t make excuses for repressive regimes because you know “what’s best” for the people in those countries, because you know better than the Cubans (or Venezuelans) struggling against repression. If you make excuses for authoritarian regimes, if you don’t stand against repression everywhere, please don’t pretend that you have principles, please don’t pretend that you’re anything but a political apologist, a political hack.

If you think a one-party state, suppression of civil liberties, government control of the media, suppression of independent unions, replacement of capitalist bosses by “Communist” bosses, secret police, prisons, executions, a network of neighborhood informers, militarism, and a personality cult are a good tradeoff for the Cuban people in exchange for free health care, free higher education, and a guaranteed low-paying job, by all means support the Cuban dictatorship, and continue to sing Fidel Castro’s praises.

 

 

Interview with Venezuelan Anarchist Juan Pablo Nuñez (in English)

Our friends at Crónicas Negras have been running a series of interviews with their fellow Venezuelan anarchists. Here’s the latest.

_________________

 

“The Venezuelan state is approving the biggest eco-suicide known in our entire history and the Boliarvian government is complicit”

Interview with Juan Pablo Núñez from Maracaibo.

 

Interviewer Rodolfo Montes de Oca (http://rodolfomontesdeoca.contrapoder.org.ve/)

 

Translation by Pietro Casati Kuyath (https://theorywithoutborders.wordpress.com/)

 

Black Chronicles are a series of interviews conducted to different anarchists currently living in Venezuela, narrating the struggles the face living in one of the few socialist regimes. These interviews deal with the everyday lives of men and women and highlight the precarious situations in which they are forced to live in.

In this edition we interview Juan Pablo Núñez, member of the band Doña Maldad, soloist in Cadáveres podrido, activist, colleague of El Libertario and anarcho-punk from the region of Zulia.

 

-How is it being a young anarchist in Venezuela? Is it challenging?

I have been fighting for this cause for more than 15 years. I am an adult, but I am still young at heart so I can answer the question: I don’t think that it is different from any other country. The matter which makes the situation complicated is the strong polarization that is dividing people. We must establish opinions that aren’t seen as crazy or even despised. Socialist Venezuela is a huge farce because it is merely the continuation of what the system supposedly criticizes to gain the same power, resources and people’s autonomy.

 

–First Manuel Rosales, then Eveling Trejo to culminate with Francisco Arias Cardenas… haven’t the people from Zulia learnt their lesson?

Neither the people from Zulia or Venezuelans from other states have learnt that regardless of who rules it is only a tool for their own interests. Manuel Rosales was governor and Dimartino was the mayor. When this happened there was a strange competitiveness between both groups of power. Meanwhile Arías Cárdenas is the governor and Trejo is the mayor. In their continuous battle to sink their political adversaries they have left the city destroyed: full of garbage, black water… In essence, their businesses and personal interests rule over the interests of the people.

 

Arias is a very strategic militant, he wants to transform Zulia into a powerful state, just like his advertisements suggest. His mission is to expand the territory with neoliberal projects of development and other interests from Colombia which include infrastructure, coal mining, ports for exportation, militarization, etc. The consequences of his policies could leave Zulia without any water resources, along with contributing to a high level of deforestation and increase in Colombian contraband. Zulia has become another business for the military.

 

-How do you see the lack of criticism from NGO’s towards the role of Francisco Arias Cárdenas, knowing that he is destroying the Sierra de Perija?

Political matters are based on blackmail. Chavism knows a lot about this because I think that it has always been their main pressure tool. I am not surprised that many organizations and NGO’s obtain mutual support from people like Francisco Arias in exchange for turning a blind eye to certain problems. They have already destroyed our lake a long time ago and nothing was done to solve this from any NGO’s.

 

–The death of Sabino Romero… What is your opinion on his death?

Sabino Romero was an important figure for his speeches and the actions he undertook to obtain land for ethnic groups like the Yukpas. He was a threat to the government because he was a firm believer in Chávez’s speech. He also altered the power relations between farmers, the military and the government. Sabino was also serving as an inspirational example for other indigenous communities in the country. This is why Sabino was killed by the farmers with the complicity of the government.

 

–How do you see the issue of the Arco Minero del Orinoco and the current focus on extractivism by the Venezuelan state?

The Arco Minero issue is something very worrying and we have to take action right now. The majority of the Venezuelan terrain in situated in the river Orinoco. They have already installed an oil-bearing station in Faja and they are about to start mining in the south. The mere action of inviting 135 transnational businesses and accepting their partnership is something incredibly nefarious for our territory and our people. We are talking about a mining program that is occurring over important reserves of water, fauna, flora and indigenous communities. The Arco Minero marks the beginning of the end of all of our natural treasures. If this doesn’t stop then death, wars and sickness will soon come. Full destruction. The Venezuelan state is approving the biggest eco-suicide known in our entire history and the Bolivian government is complicit.

 

–After so many defeats… How do you currently see the resistance of indigenous communities?

The example and reference that I have are the battles of Zulia. We are currently living the consequences of subsidized activism. Chavism gave and took away the same blackmail that we talked about. The Yukpas, after so much hardship, are now surviving because they have been abandoned to their own luck. The Wayuu of Socuy social movement have managed to start projects that keep indigenous communities optimistic. But I think that the autonomy would be the flag that should be risen and demonstrated through examples to prove that that they don’t need the state to solve their problems. Instead they must build strong alliances with the movements of the city to establish relations where people are involved and feel a sense of belonging.

 

–You play in music bands like Doña maldad and now started the band Cadáveres podridos… Is it challenging to produce independent music in Venezuela?

No, I don’t think that it is that hard, especially now when you can record with anything.

 

–Do you queue to buy regulated food or do you engage in bachaqueo?

I don’t queue, the feeling of impotence and rage that I feel don’t allow me to do so. I don’t engage in bachaqueo either because it is an extortionist practise. If you thought that only the population could save themselves from this mess take a look at this phenomena and the collective desperate desire for survival. I imagine that you must ask yourself if I buy any contraband. Our alimentation at home has been severely affected by the current situation. We eat lots of fruits and grains from a standard vegetarian diet but now we can’t even pay for grains, fruits or anything for that matter. Everything is too expensive. We should start planting seeds, everyone should do that.

 

–Have you been a victim of the increasing crime rate? Have they lynched anybody where you live?

Yes, I have been mugged several times, even by pointing a gun at my face. I am aware of thieves being killed by the police on a regular basis.

 

–How is electricity rationing where you live?

Two daily hours, sometimes this timetable is maintained and sometimes it’s not. In fact whilst I am writing this right now I know that the light will go off soon.

 

–How have people reacted to the price increase of public transport?

There have already been protests across the universities. People seem visibly miserable. I tend to use my bicycle, it’s the best option.

 

–Do you have any problems with your internet?

It is very slow. I don’t have any Internet connection at home because it broke and nobody has fixed it yet.

 

–Do you think people are starting to get fed up not only with the government but also with the opposition? Where are we heading towards?

I hope that we are heading for a revolt.

 

–Have you ever thought of running away, crossing the border? Or do you have to stay to build and fight?

Yes, I have thought about leaving on numerous occasions, but I want the current government to leave even more. All of them. In these moments we have to fight because the plans of the government are nefarious for all Venezuelans.

 

–Did you know that we all have to be inscribed to obligatory military service? How do you see the militarization of society?

Yes… I knew, but I didn’t inscribe myself. The country has ended up like this because we are in the hands of the military. What we have lived and what will soon come isn’t going to be easy, especially with CAMIMPEG, a military-mining corporation.

 

–What activities are you performing in Zulia? Do anarchist organizations exist?

There is a little bit of everything in Zulia, the movements I involve myself with are related to the defence of water, against the mining of coal… Here there are a lot of things for everybody, but we must expand our capacity in the city. Cyclers, musicians, poets, everyone in the world should establish objectives and plans of action to save this city from political unconsciousness.

 

–What should be libertarian attitudes in these moments?

In this moment we must continue organizing lots of demonstrations to highlight the inefficiency of the state.

 

–Would you like to add anything to end the interview? What would you recommend for fellow anarchists?

Assist popular markets, support fights, demonstrate your discontent and turn off your phones.

________________________

Rodolfo Montes de Oca

Bitácora personal: http://rodolfomontesdeoca.contrapoder.org.ve/

Twitter: @romontesdeoca

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Australian Science Fiction Great George Turner (part III)

The Political, Social, and Economic Concepts in George Turner’s Science Fiction Novels

by Zeke Teflon

There are three central socio-political-economic assumptions in George Turner’s sci-fin novels. One is that advanced society can’t exist without coercive authority. The second is that human beings will continue to reproduce willy nilly in all social conditions. Turner has Nick, one of the narrators, state this quite directly in Drowning Towers. The third is that there’s so little wealth to go around that it would make essentially no difference if it were more fairly distributed. Again, Turner makes this assumption explicit in Drowning Towers. (It’s always risky to extrapolate a novelist’s views from statements his characters make, but I strongly suspect that Turner wouldn’t have had his characters expound on these beliefs in book after book if he didn’t hold them.) A fourth, much less important assumption is that conventional religions will wither away over the coming decades, leaving only fringe cults.

Turner full well realized the hopelessly corrupt and corrupting nature of capitalism and government, but he could see no way out. He could see no alternative to them, and says so openly in the opening pages of The Destiny Makers, where policeman Harry Ostrov, the protagonist, remarks that socialism, communism, and anarchism have all been tried and found wanting. This largely accounts for the dark tone of Turner’s novels, because he saw the evils of capitalism and government, yet could see no viable alternatives.

But Turner is overly pessimistic. In the case of communism, the only varieties of it ever attempted on a mass scale were under the auspices of dictatorial states, which gave lip service to the concept, but in practice had distinct privileged classes that wielded power (the party, the government apparatus–what Milovan Djilas termed “the new class”), and dispossessed, nearly powerless masses. As Emma Goldman put the matter in My Disillusionment in Russia: “True Communism was never attempted in Russia, unless one considers thirty-three categories of pay, different food rations, privileges to some and indifference to the great mass as Communism.”

As for socialism, what most people think of when they hear the word is the socioeconomic systems of the Scandanavian countries. This is not socialism. More accurately, it’s welfare-state capitalism, in which corporations and economic elites continue to control society, but in which some of the damage caused by capitalism (hunger, homelessness, lack of opportunity, etc.) is papered over by reformist measures.

The other common variety of “socialism” is endemic to the third world, and is characterized by corrupt authoritarian regimes imposing it in top-down manner. To the limited extent that socialism has succeeded in these countries (overall, it hasn’t), it’s succeeded due to decentralization and democratic local control. (For further discussion, see African Anarchism: The History of a Movement and Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle.)

As for anarchism, by all accounts it was successful during the only time it was tried on a mass scale for a period of years, in Catalonia and other regions of eastern and southern Spain during the Spanish Civil War. It was eventually crushed by the combined forces of German, Italian, and Spanish fascism, but during its existence it was viable as a socio-economic system. (For further information, see Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, by Gaston Leval, and The Anarchist Collectives, by Sam Dolgoff.)

Interestingly, the one place in Turner’s sci-fi novels where he describes a functional, though small-scale, alternative political/social system–among the “genetics” in Genetic Soldier–that system is based upon distinctly anarchist concepts and practices: decentralization, lack of a central coercive authority (i.e., government), voluntary cooperation, and mutual aid. That Turner didn’t see these as attributes of anarchism doesn’t negate the fact that they are.

Turner’s Malthusian belief that human beings will mindlessly reproduce no matter what their circumstances is simply wrong, as Turner should have known. The evidence disproving this bleak assumption was already available when Turner wrote Drowning Towers (published in 1987).

For instance, in the article “Fertility in Transition,” in the Spring 1986 issue of World Focus (journal of the American Geographical Society), James L. Newman traced the causes of the decades-long decline in fertility in the European countries. He concluded that there were three reasons for a decline in the birth rate. One was industrialization: “Out of it came the public health discoveries that reduced mortality, followed by a new lifestyle which no longer necessitated large families. . . . Whereas on farms and in cottage industries children contributed their labor to the family enterprise, in the city they became consumers. Only a few offspring could be afforded if the family was to maintain or . . . improve its standard of living.” The second reason for the decline in fertility, according to Newman, was birth control. It “was the answer to these new social and economic realities.” And the third element in lowering the birth rate was the relative emancipation of women–the greater the status and freedom of women, the lower the birth rate. (A corollary of this, of course, is that patriarchal religions which demean women contribute to population growth–just look at the birth rate among Mormons.) If Turner had done even minimal research in this area, he should have known all of this.

Turner’s third bleak socio-economic assumption, that there’s simply not enough wealth to go around and that the wealth and privileges of the rich make little difference to the lives of the poor, is also simply wrong. Australia (the setting for all of Turner’s novels) and the U.S. are similar in terms of living standards and per capita wealth, and the very unequal distribution of wealth in the U.S. is approaching that depicted in Drowning Towers. In 2013, the U.S. population was approximately 316 million and total net worth was approximately $66 trillion, with the top 1% owning 35% of net worth (and 42% of financial–non-home–worth), the next 4% owning another 28%, and the bottom 95% of the population owning 37% of net worth, with almost all of it concentrated toward the top. This situation is even worse than it appears, because the bottom 40% of the population, approximately 125 million people, have “negative net worth”–in other words, their debts exceed their assets.

Crunch the numbers (divide total net worth by population) and you end up with average net worth of over $208,000–which is what individual net worth would be if wealth were divided equally.
.
So much for Turner’s assumption that there’s not enough to go around and that a more equitable distribution of wealth would make little difference to those on the bottom.

Ultimately, Turner’s faulty social, political, and economic assumptions boxed him in. They made it impossible for him to even conceive of constructive solutions to the ecological and scientific/technological problems he so well describes. But describe them he did–beautifully and memorably. That’s a major achievement.

The one place where Turner was overly optimistic is in his assumption that conventional religions will wither away over the next few decades, even under the horrendous conditions he describes, leaving only fringe groups. Religion normally thrives in conditions of poverty, illiteracy, and hopelessness–just look at the American South, since the 19th century the poorest, least literate, and most religious part of the country. The same holds in the Muslim world — its poorest and least literate parts, such as Afghanistan, tend to be the most religious. So there’s no reason to think religion would have mostly withered away in the horrible conditions Turner describes in his novels. But this is a relatively minor matter.

As for the rise of murderous cults, Turner was on the money. In 1995, the year after publication of Genetic Soldier, in which Turner describes in some detail a cult biological attack on the entire world, the Aum Shinrikiyo cult attacked the Tokyo subway system with Sarin nerve gas. When they busted the cult following the attack, Japanese authorities discovered that the cultists had also been trying to manufacture biological weapons. More recently, it appears that Muslim fanatics were responsible for the Sarin attack in Damascus in 2013. One shudders to think what religious fanatics are cooking up in clandestine labs today.
A Final Note

All of George Turner’s science fiction novels are beautifully written, and the best of them are masterpieces that serve as still-pertinent warnings about the dangers of climate change and genetic experimentation.

Turner’s best novels are Brain Child and Drowning Towers. Both are easy to find in used bookstores. Check ’em out.

* * *

Zeke Teflon is the author of  Free Radicals: A Novel of Utopia and Dystopia. He’s currently writing the sequel.

Definition of the Day 9-11-15 — Anarchism

ANARCHISM: The theory that all forms of government rest on violence and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

ANARCHY: A condition of society regulated by voluntary agreement, cooperation and mutual aid instead of government.

–Emma Goldman

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Quote of the Day 7/2/14 (Mikhail Bakunin)

English: Mikhail Bakunin, russian Anarchist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“The Marxists … console themselves with the idea that [their] rule will be temporary. They say that the only care and objective will be to educate and elevate the people economically and politically to such a degree that such a government will soon become unnecessary, and the state, after losing its political or coercive character, will automatically develop into a completely free organization of economic interests and communities

“There is a flagrant contradiction in this theory. If their state would really be of the people, why eliminate it? And if the state is needed to emancipate the workers, then the workers are not yet free, so why call it a people’s state? By our polemic against them we have brought them to the realization that freedom or anarchism, which means a free organization of the working masses from the bottom up, is the final objective of social development, and that every state, not excepting their people’s state, is a yoke, on the one hand giving rise to despotism and on the other to slavery. They say that such a yoke-dictatorship is a transitional step towards achieving full freedom for the people: anarchism or freedom is the aim, while state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses of the people, they have first to be enslaved!

“Upon this contradiction our polemic has come to a halt. They insist that only dictatorship (of course their own) can create freedom for the people. We reply that all dictatorship has no objective other than self-perpetuation, and that slavery is all it can generate and instill in the people who suffer it. Freedom can be created only by freedom…”

–Mikhail Bakunin, “Critique of the Marxist Theory of the State”

* * *

Quoted in The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations

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News on “African Anarchism” author Sam Mbah

Sam Mbah, the author of African Anarchism: The History of a Movement, is in ill health and in need of a life-saving heart operation.  Jura Books, the venerable Australian anarchist bookstore that has been around since the 1970s, is holding a fundraising campaign for Sam. Please take a moment to read through their message about Sam and the campaign.

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Don’t Call Them Libertarians

(from The Anarchist Cookbook, by Keith McHenry with Chaz Bufe, Introduction by Chris Hedges)

 

The meanings of words often shift with time. The term “fulsome” is a prime example. My 1940 edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines it as “1. Offensive, disgusting; esp. offensively excessive or insincere. 2. Rare. Lustful, wanton.” And that’s it. Today, the term’s meaning has shifted: it’s still occasionally used in sense 1 of the Webster’s definition (never in sense 2), but it’s usually used as a synonym for “plentiful,” “ample,” or “generous.”

“Libertarian” has undergone a similar extreme shift. P.J. Proudhon used the term as a synonym for “anarchist” as early as the 1840s, and the term is still almost universally used in that sense in the rest of the world, notably in Europe and Latin America—in other words, “libertarian” still means “anarchist,” an advocate of stateless, egalitarian communism or socialism, everywhere except the U.S.

To cite a few of the almost innumerable examples of this usage, in 1895 Sebastien Faure and Louise Michel founded the most important French anarchist periodical, Le Monde Libertaire (Libertarian World), which is still publishing today. The primary Cuban anarchist group group of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s (with thousands of members), was the Asociación de Libertarios Cubanos (Cuban Libertarian Association), and its youth wing was the Juventud Libertaria de Cuba (Libertarian Youth of Cuba). The Spanish anarchists of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (with over a million members in the 1930s) routinely used the words “anarchist” and “libertarian” as synonyms, as in the influential 1932 pamphlet, El comunismo libertario, by Isaac Puente. The great Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón also routinely used the terms as synonyms in the pages of Regeneración a century ago. And there exist to this day anarchist/libertarian publications titled El Libertario in both Venezuela and Uruguay.

Here in the U.S., the term “libertarian” was also commonly used as a synonym for an advocate of free, stateless socialism in the 19th century, but was also used extensively in a somewhat different sense by individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Josiah Warren, who advocated mutualism rather than socialism. These usages remained relatively constant through the middle of the 20th century. Whatever their minor differences, though, essentially all libertarians considered the abolition of the state absolutely necessary. And essentially all rejected capitalism.

Ignoring this historical context, and recognizing the usefulness of the term, advocates of laissez-faire capitalism began using “libertarian” self-referentially in the 1960s. (At the time, one of the main U.S. anarchist groups was the Libertarian League.) But even then, most of them—including, arguably, their two leading spokesmen, Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess—advocated abolition of the state, and tended to be absolutists on civil liberties. (It’s worth mentioning, though, that in place of the state Rothbard argued for a privatized repressive apparatus—though of course he didn’t use that term—including private prisons.)

Unfortunately, given the weakness of the U.S. anarchist movement at the time and the abysmal state of the mass media (some things don’t change), almost no one challenged the laissez-faire capitalists on their appropriation of the term “libertarian.”

Things turned dramatically for the worse in 1971 with the founding of the Libertarian Party, which nominated its first presidential candidate in 1972. With this move, this “Libertarian” party abandoned the most fundamental principle of all actual libertarians: abolition of the state.

Since then, U.S. “libertarians” have drifted steadily to the right. They now embrace the discredited, misnamed theory of social Darwinism (which has nothing to do with Darwin’s scientific theory) and advocate abolishing the social welfare functions of the state while retaining its repressive apparatus (the police, prisons, the military).

In their early days, U.S. “libertarians” were, by and large, reliable advocates of individual liberties. No more. Their two current leading lights, Ron Paul and Rand Paul, are outspoken opponents of reproductive rights. They advocate government interference, enforced through the threat of violence (arrest, imprisonment), in what should be private medical matters.

In sum, the term “libertarian” has now degenerated to the point where, in the U.S., it refers to laissez-faire capitalists who embrace social Darwinism (notably as expounded by cult figure Ayn Rand), who embrace the repressive functions of the state, and who advocate state intrusion into the most intimate aspects of our private lives.

Comparing anarchists and laissez-faire “libertarians” on a few specifics is instructive.

First, the similarities:

• Anarchists tend to be civil liberties absolutists.
• “Libertarians” tend to be civil liberties absolutists. As “libertarians” drift further to the right, though, one expects this commitment to lessen.

 

• Anarchists almost invariably oppose military adventurism.
• “Libertarians” by and large oppose military adventurism.

 

• Anarchists almost invariably support reproductive rights.
•  “Libertarians” are divided on the issue; some advocate state intrusion into private medical matters, though one suspects that most “libertarians” still favor reproductive rights.

 

Now the differences:

• Anarchists reject the state, especially its repressive functions. By and large they don’t object to its social welfare functions, which they see as ameliorating the worst effects of a grossly unfair distribution of wealth and income.
• “Libertarians” support the state, especially its repressive functions, and reject its social welfare functions. Many of them have social Darwinist views, see the misery of the poor as a good thing, and want to increase it by destroying what’s left of the social safety net.

 

• Anarchists believe that the world’s natural resources should be shared equally. (Who created those resources? And why should only a few benefit from them?)
• “Libertarians” believe that the world’s natural resources should be in the hands of those ruthless enough to seize them, and their heirs.

 

• Anarchists believe that wages should be equal, with perhaps additional pay for those doing dangerous or distasteful work.
• “Libertarians” believe that grossly unequal income is not only acceptable, but desirable—again due to social Darwinist views—and they have no problem with those doing no useful work receiving the highest incomes and those doing dirty, dangerous work receiving the lowest.

 

• Anarchists believe that workers should democratically control their workplaces, their working conditions, and what they produce.
• “Libertarians” believe that workers should live under a workplace dictatorship (their employer’s) and have no say in either their working conditions or what they produce.

 

• Anarchists by and large accept scientific theories and conclusions.
• “Libertarians,” more and more, deny them.

 

This denialism is especially noticeable in the climate change debate. Anarchists almost universally accept the scientific conclusion (backed by an overwhelming majority of scientists) that climate change, global warming, is real and is a terrible threat to the planet. More and more “libertarians” deny it. Some go further. Two of the leading funders of the climate-change-denial industry are the “libertarian” Koch brothers (heirs, whose money comes largely from fossil fuels).

Michael Shermer, editor/publisher of Skeptic and a leading and consistent “libertarian” intellectual, provides further testimony of “libertarian” climate change denial:

[A]t the 2013 FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas—the largest gathering of libertarians in the world—…I participated in two debates, one on gun control and the other on climate change… [T]his year I was so discouraged by the rampant denial of science that I wanted to turn in my libertarian membership card. At the gun-control debate… proposing even modest measures that would have almost no effect on freedom—such as background checks–brought on opprobrium as if I had burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution on stage. In the climate debate, when I showed that between 90 and 98 percent of climate scientists accept anthropogenic global warming, someone shouted, ‘LIAR’ and stormed out of the room. (Scientific American, October 2013, p. 95)

“Libertarian” climate change denial is hardly surprising. Climate change denial has absolutely nothing to do with libertarianism in its traditional, leftist sense. What it does have to do with is capitalism. If the predominant conclusion of climate change science, that climate change is largely man made, is correct (and it almost certainly is), that means that the laissez-faire “invisible hand” article of faith is spectacularly wrong on perhaps the most important issue of our times. For that article of faith to be correct, the unbridled pursuit of profit by the fossil-fuel energy companies could not lead to disastrous results the world over. Science indicates that it does, so out goes science. All of this is evidence that “libertarian” ideology in the U.S. is nothing but a minor variant of laissez-faire capitalist ideology, and one that grows increasingly indistinguishable from it with every passing day.

Since the 1960s, American laissez-faire capitalists have turned the meaning of the once useful word “libertarian” on its head. And, still, virtually no one challenges them on their gross misuse of  the term.

That’s fulsome.

Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism

Here’s one I translated about 30 years ago. It’s by the great Italian anarchist Luigi Fabbri, and unfortunately is still relevant. Thanks to our friends at LibCom for making it available.

http://libcom.org/library/bourgeois-influences-anarchism

Quote of the Day 3-17-14 (Lysander Spooner)

“[W]e have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract–the Constitution–made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions that are to com, but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed or acknowledged…

“And we are so insane, or so wicked, as to destroy property and lives without limit, in fighting to compel men to fulfill a supposed contract, which, inasmuch as it has never been signed by anybody, is on general principles of law and reason–such principles as we are all governed by in regard to other contracts–the merest waste paper, binding upon nobody, fit only to be thrown into the fire, or, if preserved, preserved only to serve as a witness and warning of the folly and wickedness of mankind.”

–Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)

* * *

Quoted in The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations

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Quote of the Day 1-20-14 (Peter Kropotkin)

“It is only those who do nothing who make no mistakes.”

–Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideals

* * *

Quoted in The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations

Anarchist Science Fiction Links

 

by Nicholas P. Oakley, author of The Watcher

1. Ben Beck’s Anarchism and Science Fiction Reading List
Perhaps the best of the bunch. Comprehensive and regularly updated. Definitely worth a look.

2. io9′s 10 Greatest Libertarian Science Fiction Stories  Even with the L-word in the title, still a strong list all the same. Recommended for beginners to the genre, and includes all the names you’d expect.

3. Mythmakers & Lawbreakers Anarchist Fiction Writers  From Margaret Killjoy’s excellent book, published by AK Press, a 26 page appendix listing a bunch of anarchist fiction writers (including bibliographies). Also listed are works of fiction that feature anarchist history, anarchist societies, anarchist characters, and even anarchist villains. Definitely worth downloading or bookmarking for those that have read most of the better known anarchist SF works and want to delve a little deeper.

4. Dan Clore’s Essential Science Fiction and Fantasy for Libertarians  I hesitate to put this one up, as it isn’t an “anarchist” list, but a libertarian one. That said, most of these picks are not controversial however you paint your own particular brand of anarchism, and Clore does a good job of highlighting a few neglected classics.

5. Left-wing SFF Listopia on Goodreads  Good, simple list of lefty and some anarchist SF. Perhaps the easiest to browse and check out some of the unfamiliar titles. Another one for the newcomer.

6. Anarchist Studies Network SFF Reading List  A pretty limited list, but does include Moorcock and MacLeod, as well as having some other bibliographical data too.

Originally posted at http://quercusrubra.co.uk

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