Anti-Semitism Definition

Chris Hedges just put up a fantastic, fearless post on Truthout about the libeling of those of us who oppose Israeli brutalization and murder of Palestinians as “anti-semitic” (e.g., 200+ murders and thousands of deliberate maimings by Israeli snipers of protesters on the other side of the fence in Gaza during the ongoing “right of return” protests — and just ask yourself, how desperate must people be to deliberately expose themselves to murder and maiming, while the corporate press dishonestly excuses that slaughter — sniper shootings at hundreds of yards — as “clashes”? ). I just wish I could repost Chris’s piece here.

Hence an inadequate but claratory definition from The American Heretic’s Dictionary about what “anti-semitism” means currently in the U.S.:

Anti-Semitism, n. 1) A blind, unreasoning hatred of Jewish people by those who fear, with good reason, that they are inferior to Jews. (This is not to say that Jews are inherently superior to anyone else, even anti-Semites; rather, that Jewish culture encourages self-responsibility, social responsibility, learning, dedication to goals, and individual achievement—things sorely lacking in the mainstream of American culture. Hence Jews tend to be perceived as threatening “overachievers” in comparison with average, “fetch me another beer, Bubba” Americans.); 2) As defined in the United States for well over half a century, the unspeakable act of criticizing the oppression and murder of one Semitic people by another (Palestinians by Israelis). Needless to say, this leads to gross confusion of those who seek social justice with actual anti-Semites—which is precisely the intention of those who use the term in this manner. (Curiously, the ethnicity of all of these individuals is apparently Irish, as they invariably respond to the name “McCarthy.”)

* * *

—from The American Heretic’s Dictionary (revised & expanded)

 

 

 

 

 

Yet more Interesting and Marginally Useful Internet Crap

Here’s the latest installment in our ever-popular Internet Crap series, which mixes links to sick and absurd but amusing crap with links to useful crap. Enjoy!

• Feeling a bit down, a bit left out, like you just don’t fit in? You might be a psychopath. Then again, you might not. Find out now with Channel 4‘s  Psychopathic Traits test. Their Spot The Psychopath game is also good, clean fun.
• If you’re a writer, you’ll want to check out Ralan.com. It has by far the best collection of useful links for writers that we’ve ever seen. (Thanks to Ted Weber, author of Sleep State Interrupt, for this one.)
• We hear a lot lately about Donald Trump and fascism. For a good, short dissection of the topic, check out Chris Hedges’ “Trump and the Christian Fascists.” (If the title of the piece aroused your curiosity, no, veteran journalist Hedges is not a militant atheist — he’s an ordained Presbyterian minister.)
• If you’ve ever wondered why so many MLM and other scams target conservative religious believers, wonder no more. Mette Harrison does a good job of explaining it in “10 reasons Mormons dominate multi-level marketing companies” on the Religion News Service site.
• The Guardian reports that earlier this year, a 21-year-old Spanish student, Cassandra Vera from the Murcia region, was convicted of “glorifying terrorism” and sentenced to a year in jail for a series of jokes she posted on Twitter in 2013. The funniest one concerned the 1973 assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, the Spanish prime minister during the last years of the Franco dictatorship.  Carrero Blanco was killed when the Basque terrorist group ETA detonated a huge bomb beneath a street as Carrero Blanco’s car passed over it, with the explosion hurling the vehicle nearly 70 feet into the air. That’s a long set-up for Vera’s joke, but necessary to understanding it. Here’s the joke, and it’s worth the wait: “ETA launched a policy against official cars combined with a space program.”
• In these days of “fake news” and deliberate muddying of the waters by the president and his enablers, how do you tell what’s real from conspiracy theories? Hero whistleblower John Kiriakou, who was viciously persecuted by the Obama administration and spent nearly two years in jail as a result, tells us how in “How to Challenge Media Narratives Without Being Called a Conspiracy Theorist.”
• Ever wonder what’s the most effective thing individuals can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Environmental Research Letters reports that, as should be blindingly obvious by now, the most effective individual action by far is to have fewer kids. (Of course, organized crime — the Catholic Church, LDS church, et al. — will never admit this, because they don’t care about the environment nor the common good; they just want more money and more blindly believing foot soldiers.)
• We seem to constantly hear about the “civilizing effects” of religion. Here’s a prime example from a deeply devout area, in this case a deeply devout Islamic area. The title says it all in the CNN report, “Pakistani village elders order retaliatory rape of 17-year-old girl.” One can only imagine what these people would be up to without the “civilizing effects” of their “great religion.”
• Since no Internet Crap post would be complete without at least one link to a cybersecurity how-to story, here you go. The Intercept has an enlightening piece in comic-book format titled “How to protect yourself against spearfishing: A comic explanation.”
• If you were puzzled as to why so many Alabama “values voters” were ready and willing to vote for an alleged (have to get that in there) pedophile, Kathryn Brightbill does a good job of explaining it in her Los Angeles Times op ed, “Roy Moore’s alleged pursuit of a young girl is the symptom of a larger problem in evangelical circles.”
• Finally, in still more religion news, the AP reports that “a woman shot her boyfriend in the head after he asked her to kill him because he thought the leader of a cult they belonged to was a reptile posing as a human.”

And . . . Th . . . Th . . . Th . . . Th . . . Th . . . Th . . . That’s all folks!

Quote of the Day 11-21-17 (Chris Hedges)

“Pity Canada. Its citizens watch the stages of U.S. decline and then, a few years later, inflict on themselves the same cruelties. . . .

“Canada is currently in the Barack Obama phase of self-immolation. Its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is—as Obama was—a fresh face with no real political past or established beliefs, a brand. Trudeau excels, like Obama, French President Emmanuel Macron, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in empty symbolism. These ‘moderates’ spew progressive and inclusive rhetoric while facilitating social inequality, a loss of rights and the degradation of the environment by global corporations. They are actors in skillfully crafted corporate advertisements. . . .

“Lifestyle choices and expressions of personal identity are respected, even championed, while we are politically disempowered. The focus on multiculturalism and identity politics is anti-politics. It is accompanied by sterile reforms—such as more professionalized policing—that never challenge the underlying structures of corporate power . . .”

–Chris Hedges, “Behind the Mask of the ‘Moderates‘” on Truthdig

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.

Related articles

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

The Opioid “Epidemic” — what no one is talking about

by Chaz Bufe, author of Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?

Chris Hedges’ series on RT, “On Contact with Chris Hedges,” has a new episode titled “The Fatal Addiction.” In it, Hedges does a fine job of presenting the human cost — the heartache, the deaths (50,000 last year in the U.S.) — caused by opioid addiction and overdoses.

While he succeeds at that, he doesn’t deal with the causes of addiction, nor with the failed, dominant approaches to curbing drug addiction, nor with better approaches. (Of course, it’s too much to expect any of this in a half-hour documentary, and one hope Hedges will deal with these matters in future episodes.)

Since “The Fatal Addiction” doesn’t tackle these issues, we will here. Please consider the following:

• The dominant view of addiction in the U.S. is that it’s both a result of moral failings and is a “disease” or “illness.” (See AA’s “Big Book.”) This is  wrong on both counts, which can be easily seen when you look at historical addiction and overdose rates. They’re not steady, but vary dramatically over time.

Opioid overdose deaths have multiplied tenfold over the last two decades in the U.S.; reported rates of alcoholism have also fluctuated considerably over the years; the rate of tobacco addiction has plummeted in recent decades; and 95% of American soldiers who were addicted to heroin in Vietnam kicked it without treatment after they came home.

If addiction was caused by moral “shortcomings” (see AA’s 12 steps), one might ask whether former tobacco addicts became more moral over the years, whether morality skyrocketed among heroin-addicted Vietnam vets after they returned home, and whether the spiking opioid addiction rate has been caused by a mass outbreak of individual depravity.

If addiction is a “disease,” not a behavior, as we’re constantly told by 12-step treatment professionals, 12-stepping celebrities, and reporters who accept that absurd assertion at face value and who haven’t done their jobs (investigating, analyzing, raising awkward questions), one might ask the following: Why would the rates of addiction to different substances vary so radically from one substance to another in the same time periods, why would the rates of addiction to single substances vary so radically over time, and what does disease “theory” predict about rates of addiction in the years ahead?

Disease “theory” advocates have no answers to these questions, because disease “theory” is a “theory” only in the popular sense of the term (a conjecture or wild guess). In a word, it’s an assertion. It is in no way a scientific theory, and hence cannot provide answers; its adherents cannot use it to generate testable (falsifiable) predictions.

The dominant 12-step view of addiction (that it results from moral shortcomings and is a “disease”) is very, very wrong.

(As for the actual roots of addiction, one can look to psychological factors — stress and hopelessness, to oversimplify — and the environmental factors contributing to stress and hopelessness. I dealt with this in a separate post, “AA, the War on Drugs, and Disastrous Misconceptions,” so I’ll leave the matter here.)

• As for AA and the treatment approaches derived from AA with its incorrect assertions about “moral” failings and “disease,” they’re every bit as ineffective as you’d expect.

Twelve-step groups such as AA and its clones (NA, CA, etc.) produce results no better than the rate of spontaneous remission, as shown by the best available studies: studies with control groups and random assignment of subjects, mass-participation longitudinal studies, and AA’s own triennial surveys. I summarized this evidence in “Alcoholics Anonymous Is Not Effective,” so again I’ll leave the matter here.

The formal (“professional”) 12-step treatment programs derived from AA are just as ineffective as AA itself. (I haven’t put up anything about this on the blog, but deal with the matter at length in Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?)

One telling segment in Chris Hedges’ documentary is with an interviewee who mentions an addict who’s been in and out of rehab 17 times, which the interviewee says is typical. (The numerous 12-step references in the documentary [“meetings,” “sponsors,” “recovering addicts”] are equally typical.)

Clearly, the dominant American approaches to addiction aren’t working. Why, beyond faulty “moral failings” / “disease” premises?

• For one thing, we’ve been stuck with the authoritarian, worse-than-useless “war on drugs” and the criminalization of addicts and recreational drug users for decades. This has resulted in untold suffering and incredible waste of tax money (easily $1 trillion over the years, and currently a good $50 to $70 billion per year).  Criminalization has ruined countless lives to no good effect, and it’s been utterly ineffective at reducing drug use and addiction. If you doubt this, consider the number of opioid overdose deaths over the years, that hard drugs are freely available to almost anyone who wants them (see Hedges’ “The Fatal Addiction“), and have become both cheaper and more powerful as the “war on drugs” has ground on.

So, what does work? What will reduce drug use, addiction rates, and deaths from overdoses?

• On the purely personal level, the only treatment approaches with good evidence of efficacy are cognitive behavioral therapy approaches. (I deal with this in the final paragraphs of “Alcoholics Anonymous Is Not Effective.”)

I should note that methadone “treatment” merely substitutes a legal synthetic narcotic for illegal narcotics; this is substitution, not treatment — it keeps users dependent on an addictive substance.

• On the societal level, it’s obvious that the “war on drugs” and criminalization of drug users and addicts must be abandoned.

Not only has criminalization of drug users and addicts failed to reduce the rates of drug use and drug addiction, it has taken an incredible human and economic toll. It’s done nothing to reduce the availability nor the price of drugs. And it’s a major component of “big government” intrusion into the lives of individuals.

Criminalization of drugs and drug users has been an utter disaster.

(Those who profit from the enslavement of “war on drugs” prisoners might disagree.)

Criminalization of drugs and their users is in large part directly responsible for the tens of thousands of overdose deaths every year in the U.S. Why? There is no quality control with illegal drugs. Those who buy them (especially opioids) are quite literally gambling with their lives, and multitudes lose that gamble every year.

So, is legalization (or at least decriminalization) a better approach?

Yes.

In Portugal, where drug use was decriminalized in 2001, the rate of death from overdoses has plummeted, as shown in a recent Washington Post article, “Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal.” The rate of opioid addiction has fallen in half. Portuguese taxpayers aren’t paying ungodly amounts of money annually to lock up drug users and drug addicts. And Big Brother isn’t intruding (or at least intruding less) into one aspect of the lives of individuals.

• Finally, here’s a question that almost no one asks, and even fewer try to answer: Why do millions of Americans feel so stressed, so hopeless that they drink themselves to death or play Russian Roulette with hard drugs?

The answer to that question has been available for decades.

Quote of the Day 5-1-17 (Chris Hedges)

“Donald Trump is the face of our collective idiocy. He is what lies behind the mask of our professed civility and rationality—a sputtering, narcissistic, bloodthirsty megalomaniac. He wields armies and fleets against the wretched of the earth, blithely ignores the catastrophic human misery caused by global warming, pillages on behalf of global oligarchs and at night sits slack-jawed in front of a television set before opening his “beautiful” Twitter account. He is our version of the Roman emperor Nero . . .”

–Chris Hedges, “Reign of Idiots“

Our New Favorite Cartoonist: Mr. Fish

Here’s one from our new favorite editorial cartoonist, Mr. Fish, over at Truthdig, our new favorite news and analysis site. We don’t agree with everything they publish, but damn! do they post some insightful material. Their two founders, journalists Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer, are profiles in courage and national treasures.

Quote of the Day 11-22-16 (Chris Hedges)

“Liberals have no moral authority to preach to a dispossessed white working class about racism, multiculturalism, identity politics or diversity. The abject failure by liberals to fight for economic justice triggered the protofascist backlash embodied by Donald Trump’s election victory.”

–Chris Hedges, “We Are All Deplorables,” on Truthdig

(in which Hedges gets it exactly right about what’s wrong with the Democratic Party and the “limousine liberal,” identity-politics corporate sellouts who control it and who have systematically betrayed working people for decades)

New “Anarchist Cookbook” review

Anarcho-Syndicalist Review just published a nice review of the new Anarchist Cookbook in their Fall 2016 issue. Here’s the full review:

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The Anarchist Cookbook, by Keith McHenry with Chaz Bufe. See Sharp Press, 2015, 154 pp. [8.5″X11″], $19.95.

This book was released as a refutation of the earlier book of the same title, which (in addition to its bad politics and dangerous recipes has repeatedly been used by police to entrap people on terrorism charges. Its first 89 pages briefly discuss anarchist theory and ‘recipes for social change’ such as organizing events (a practical, detailed section that any novice should find helpful), blockades and occupations. Part III opens with a discussion of the politics of food before offering 24 pages of vegan recipes, many suited for large crowds. Chris Hedges’ introduction offers a sympathetic appraisal of the anarchist tradition, stressing (as does the book as a whole) the movement’s fundamentally nonviolent nature.

The book is grounded in Food Not Bombs’ practice of activist feeding, but also draws on See Sharp’s library of anarchist pamphlets. Part One distinguishes anarchism from terrorism, primitivism, chaos, rejection of (non-coercive) organization, amoral egotism, and the right-wing has co-opted as capitalist-friendly ‘libertarianism.’ An excerpt from the classic You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship reminds us that revolution is fundamentally about organizing people to create a new society.

The practical nature of the book emerges in its second half. There is extensive and sensible discussion of provocateurs and informants, some of who have lured FNB volunteers into long prison terms. Brief chapters offer steps on organizing meetings, a consensus flow chart (FNB has always been fond of this profoundly anti-democratic decision-making process), promoting local events, and convening a gathering. There are useful tips for novices on public outreach, such as how to pack a literature table’s contents, and why rocks (police can accuse one of stocking them as weapons) are not as good as rubber bands to secure flyers.

McHenry believes that conscious eating brings people together to live more lightly off the land. Community is formed as we meet and eat together. So he offers recipes for small groups of five or six, many of which can be expanded to feed 100. The recipes are generally simple, hard to mess up (necessary if volunteers unused to working with each other are doing the cooking), and filling.

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Anarcho-Syndicalist Review is always well worth reading. The cover article in this issue, “The Cult of Che,” is worth the price of the entire magazine. Subscriptions are $15 for three issues. and the address is ASR, P.O. Box 42531, Philadelphia, PA 19101. Their web site is at http://www.syndicalist.us.

 

Quote of the Day 6-11-16 (Sheldon Wolin)

“The crucial element that sets off inverted totalitarianism from Nazism is that while the latter imposed a regime of mobilization upon its citizenry, inverted totalitarianism works to depoliticize its citizens, thus paying a left-handed compliment to the prior experience of democratization. Where the Nazis strove to give the masses a sense of collective power and confidence, Kraft durch Freude (or ‘strength through joy’), the inverted regime promotes a sense of weakness, collective futility that culminates in the erosion of the democratic faith, in political apathy and the privatization of the self. Where the Nazis wanted a continuously mobilized society that would support its masters without complaint and enthusiastically vote ‘yes’ at the managed plebiscites, the elite of inverted totalitarianism wants a politically demobilized society that hardly votes at all.”

–Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, quoted by Chris Hedges in “Shut Down the Democratic National Convention“

Related articles

• Chris Hedges | Reform or Revolution (riseuptimes.org)

Revolutionary Nonviolence (repost)

(From The Anarchist Cookbook, by Keith McHenry with Chaz Bufe, introduction by Chris Hedges. The book shipped from the printer on Tuesday and will be available in bookstores and from online booksellers by the end of next week.)

by Keith McHenry

The popular graffiti tag “Anarchy is love” speaks to the roots of revolutionary action, action taken by those seeking to make anarchism real. As we seek to replace coercive, hierarchical organizations with positive, life-affirming projects such as info shops, community gardens, worker-managed collectives, free schools, and other do-it-yourself efforts, we must organize against coercion, exploitation, and domination in all their forms.

Nonviolent resistance and noncooperation are probably the most effective ways to achieve long-lasting, positive social change. There is dignity in nonviolent resistance, a dignity needed to sustain change. To be effective, it is often necessary to have large numbers of supporters and to be persistent. Your intentions should be clear to both the institutions resisting change and the people you intend to attract as supporters. Honesty and truth are your most important allies. While often difficult, compassion and respect for your opponents, combined with truth and honesty, are essential to undermining the power of even the most ruthless and inhumane institutions. The longer and more violent the repression, the harder it is to remain compassionate, but by retaining your integrity in the face of extreme conditions you will often attract increased popular support and weaken the resolve of those hired to stop your efforts. Participants in nonviolent resistance will increase their feelings of empowerment and pride the longer they remain dedicated to nonviolence.

Nonviolence is not just a theory; it means responding to injustice with action. Nonviolence should not be confused with inaction. Withholding support and refusing to cooperate with institutions and policies of violence, exploitation and injustice is a principal tactic of nonviolent resistance.

Just because participants are dedicated to nonviolence, you can’t expect the authorities to restrain their violence. Often the state will increase its violence if it believes your campaign is succeeding, but as repression grows so will your support. What might seem like months, maybe years of failure can change suddenly.

San Francisco Food Not Bombs (FNB) persisted in sharing food every week for seven years of near daily arrests that became violent due to the police; and, in 1995, the local media, which had been very critical of FNB, finally started ridiculing city officials for wasting money and resources on stopping our meals for the homeless. Their reports reflected the perspective of their corporate owners and politicians in San Francisco who came to see it was not possible to stop Food Not Bombs. Our persistence and dedication to nonviolence attracted public support. Our volunteers would not give up, knowing that, if we did, future efforts to silence Food Not Bombs groups in other cities were more likely.

The San Francisco police officers hired to arrest and beat us withdrew their support for the campaign against Food Not Bombs and started to see themselves as allies of our volunteers against those ordering the repression. Seven years of building relationships with the officers caused the department leaders to first issue an order to “stop fraternizing” with our volunteers, and once it became clear that they could not count on their patrol men and women to continue arresting and beating us with enough enthusiasm, they called off the whole project. The officers grew to see we were honest, caring people and not anti-American criminals bent on disobeying the law out of self-interest, as they had been told by their superiors.

Corporate and government leaders ended their repressive campaign in order to protect their illusion of control; worried that if it became clear to the public that our persistence and relationships with the police had worked, more sectors of the community might have withdrawn support for their authority. Imagine if the patrol officers were perceived by the public as refusing orders. What would be next?

It is extremely important that we act in a manner which is consistent with our values. We want a future without violence and exploitation. Means determine ends. It is never in our interest to use violence against the police or others.

Campaigns of violence, even against the most unethical opponents, can be very disempowering and, even if successful will usually install new institutions that rely on violence to protect their authority. If power changes hands after a campaign of nonviolence, it is more likely that the new institutions will have popular support and maintain their power through consent of the people.

On the practical side, the dominant power usually can muster significantly more violent force than we can. The authorities strive to engage their opponents in realms where they have the advantage, notably armed conflict. But, more philosophically, we don’t want to use power for domination in our efforts for social change. Imagine if San Francisco Food Not Bombs adopted a strategy of throwing rocks at the police when they came to arrest us. Instead of the public understanding our message that the government and corporations are intentionally redirecting resources toward the military while letting thousands go without food, the impression would have been that the police were justified in using violence to protect themselves and the community from criminals who have no respect for the public, let alone for the police. (The media reported extensively for years about how violent our volunteers were after several frustrated activists tossed bagels over a line of riot police to hungry people blocked from getting to the food.) We want to create a society based upon human rights and human needs, not dependent on the threat and use of violence. We do not want to dominate. We want to seek the truth and support each other as we work to resolve conflicts without violence.

University of Denver political science professor Erica Chenoweth, co-author with Maria J. Stephan of the book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, was surprised to find that “campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts.” She, like many others, assumed that the most effective way to topple dictatorships and other repressive regimes is to use military tactics.
Chenoweth’s and Stephan’s research showed that “uprisings were 50 percent more likely to fail if they turn to violence.”

Washington Post reporter Max Fisher put it like this:

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth used to believe, as many do, that violence is the most reliable way to get rid of a dictator. History is filled, after all, with coups, rebellions and civil wars. She didn’t take public protests or other forms of peaceful resistance very seriously; how could they possibly upend a powerful, authoritarian regime?

A nonviolent uprising can evolve into long lasting change since its power comes from popular support and participation of a substantial number of people. It was once believed that it would take the participation of at least 5% of the population to force change, but Chenoweth and Stephan found that in most uprisings since 1900 it took only 3.5% of the population to bring down a dictator.

Their research also showed that when a government changed hands through the use of violence, the new government turned to violence to stay in power. Using violence to take power often reduces popular support, and so increases the “need” for more violence.

Chenoweth believes that “a violent uprising is more physically demanding and dangerous and thus scares off participants, but I’d add that violence is controversial and can engender sympathy for police and soldiers at the other end of dissidents’ rifles.”

She tells the Washington Post that “The data shows the number may be lower than that [3.5%]. No single campaign in that period failed after they’d achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5% of the population.” She adds, “But get this: every single campaign that exceeded that 3.5% point was a nonviolent one. The nonviolent campaigns were on average four times larger than the average violent campaigns.”

Public support for Occupy Oakland was at an all time high after 26-year-old Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen was nearly killed on October 25, 2011 by Oakland police who deliberately fired a tear gas canister into his head. The Oakland city council even scheduled a special meeting to vote on a proposal to endorse the occupation. Support vanished overnight after people claiming to support “diversity of tactics” vandalized Whole Foods and several local small businesses on November 2, 2011.

Rebecca Solnit’s November 2011 essay, “Throwing Out the Master’s Tools and Building a Better House: Thoughts on the Importance of Nonviolence in the Occupy Revolution,” describes her decades of activism and her direct experience of radical anarchist successes being derailed by macho acts of violence.

Solnit participated in the “N30” protests that blockaded the World Trade Organization Ministerial Summit in Seattle in 1999. She writes, “To shut down the whole central city of Seattle and the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting on November 30, 1999, or the business district of San Francisco for three days in March of 2003, or the Port of Oakland on November 2, 2011—through people power—is one hell of a great way to stand up. It works. And it brings great joy and sense of power to those who do it.” She could have also mentioned the week-long blockade of the San Francisco federal building during the first Gulf War, which she also participated in.

Anarchists in places around the world, including Zagreb and Manila, have asked me if I participated in the “heroic black bloc” assault on the windows of Starbucks and Nike during the 1999 Seattle protest. They were surprised to learn that we shut down the WTO summit despite those “heroic” assaults. They had never heard of the years of organization or the Direct Action Network and its pledge of nonviolent action, and the months of nonviolence preparations that went into shutting down the WTO meeting.

Anarchist and New York Times best-selling author Starhawk wrote an essay called “How We Really Shut Down the WTO.” She writes about seeing news of the protests after having been freed from the King County jail:

The reports have pontificated endlessly about a few broken windows, and mostly ignored the Direct Action Network, the group that successfully organized the nonviolent direct action that ultimately involved thousands of people. The true story of what made the action a success is not being told.

Food Not Bombs organized the UnFree Trade Tour in 1997 visiting 60 cities in North America explaining the dangers of the WTO and advocating a mass mobilization to shut it down if it ever held a ministerial meeting in North America. A year later the WTO announced it would meet in Seattle in November 1999, and the organizing started in earnest with formation of the Direct Action Network. Organizers came to consensus to present a pledge to participants to take nonviolent action. Activists agreed to “refrain from violence, physical or verbal, not to carry weapons, not to
bring or use illegal drugs or alcohol, and not to destroy property.”

Starhawk notes:

We were asked to agree only for the purpose of the 11/30 action—not to sign on to any of these as a life philosophy, and the group acknowledged that there is much diversity of opinion around some of these guidelines.

She goes on to say:

In the weeks and days before the blockade, thousands of people were given nonviolence training—a three hour course that combined the history and philosophy of nonviolence with real life practice through role plays in staying calm in tense situations, using nonviolent tactics, responding to brutality, and making decisions together. Thousands also went through a second-level training in jail preparation, solidarity strategies and tactics and legal aspects. As well, there were first aid trainings, trainings in blockade tactics, street theater, meeting facilitation, and other skills.

Rebecca Solnit’s response to the black bloc attack on local businesses in Oakland in 2011 comments on the literature within the anarchist community glorifying violence. She writes:

CrimethInc, whose logo is its name inside a bullet, doesn’t actually cite examples of violence achieving anything in our recent history. Can you name any? The anonymous writers don’t seem prepared to act, just tell others to (as do the two most high-profile advocates of violence on the left).

Solnit continues:

CrimethInc issued a screed in justification of violence that circulated widely in the Occupy movement. It’s titled “Dear Occupiers: A Letter from Anarchists,” though most anarchists I know would disagree with almost everything that follows. Midway through it declares, “Not everyone is resigned to legalistic pacifism; some people still remember how to stand up for themselves. Assuming that those at the front of clashes with the authorities are somehow in league with the authorities is not only illogical . . . It is typical of privileged people who have been taught to trust the authorities and fear everyone who disobeys them. . . .”

[D]espite the smear quoted above that privileged people oppose them, theirs is the language of privilege. White kids can do crazy shit and get slapped on the wrist or maybe slapped around for it . . . [Those with skin of a a different] color face far more dire consequences.

As do families with children and older people who are in danger when the black bloc provides the opportunity for the authorities to use violence—with the blessing of a public disturbed by images of rampaging thugs.

Anarchists dedicated to nonviolent direct action are not opposed to all forms of property damage. It can be an effective strategy if the decision to do it involves all participants, the target chosen is one that will guarantee no one who is not part of the action could be injured, and the method used does not frighten the public. If those participating also take credit and destroy property that is clearly injurious, that sends a clear message to both those who are being targeted and the public; that type of property damage can be empowering to those participating in it and can serve as an inspiration to those you want to join you.

A simple example is the Food Not Bombs actions taken the night of August 19th and at lunch time on August 20, 1981. Food Not Bombs shared vegan meals outside a weapons bazaar at Boston University the day after we spray-painted the outline of “dead” bodies on the ground, stenciled mushroom clouds with the word “Today?” and wheat-pasted “War is Murder for Profit” posters along the route that the weapons buyers and sellers would take from their hotel to the conference hall. We stood outside the conference holding poster boards with the mushroom cloud image that we had stenciled dozens of times outside the Student Union and along Commonwealth Avenue, taking credit for hundreds of dollars in graffiti damage to Boston University’s property. Who did this frighten into the arms of the state? No one.

Solnit explains anarchist support of property damage this way:

I want to be clear that property damage is not necessarily violence. The firefighter breaks the door to get the people out of the building. But the husband breaks the dishes to demonstrate to his wife that he can and may also break her. It’s violence displaced onto the inanimate as a threat to the animate. Quietly eradicating experimental GMO crops or pulling up mining claim stakes is generally like the firefighter. Breaking windows during a big demonstration is more like the husband. I saw the windows of a Starbucks and a Niketown broken in downtown Seattle after nonviolent direct action had shut the central city and the World Trade Organization ministerial down. I saw scared-looking workers and knew that the CEOs and shareholders were not going to face that turbulence and they sure were not going to be the ones to clean it up. Economically it meant nothing to them.

French farmer and anti-globalization activist José Bové has taken part in several actions involving property damage during campaigns of nonviolent resistance. Bové declared, “I am an anarcho-syndicalist. I am closer to Bakunin than Marx. My references are the Jura Federation in the First International in the [19th] century and the Spanish CNT of 1936.”

Bové participated an a nonviolent direct action destroying genetically engineered maize in a grain silo in Nérac in the department of Lot-et-Garonne, France. At his trial he stated, “Today, I am present in this court together with Rene Riese and Francois Roux, accused of committing a serious crime according to the law. The alleged crime is the destruction of sacks of genetically modified maize [corn]. Yes, on January 8, I participated in the destruction of genetically modified maize, which was stored in Novartis’ grain silos in Nerac. And the only regret I have now is that I wasn’t able to destroy more of it.”

On August 12, 1999 Bové participated with activists from the Confédération Paysanne, the second largest farmers’ union in France, in the “dismantling” of a McDonald’s franchise that was under construction in Millau, Aveyron, France. Bové was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for his role in the destruction. He was imprisoned for 44 days and released on August 1, 2002. The actions of the Confédération Paysanne helped bring global attention to the policies of the World Trade Organization and neoliberal structural adjustment/economic austerity programs. Over 40,000 people attended the trial of Bové and his co-defendants.

Anarchism is fundamentally about collective action using the nonhierarchical process of consensus in the decision-making process to include all those affected. Actions such as those taken by the black bloc cannot by design be agreed to by all those who are affected. Rather, they’re imposed on other participants in actions.

Solnit writes:

The euphemism for violence is “diversity of tactics,” perhaps because diversity has been a liberal-progressive buzzword these past decades. But diversity does not mean that anything goes and that democratic decision making doesn’t apply.

I participated in the protests against the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008. While staffing the Food Not Bombs table I witnessed two white vans arrive in Civic Center Park in the early evening of August 25, unloading twelve buff men in black Obama for President t-shirts, black pants, and black bandanas covering their crewcuts. Two of these men had a knapsack. The vans drove away leaving the 12 “black bloc” men. They divided into two groups, one headed to the west side of the protesters preparing to march to the convention and the other six went to the east end of the gathering. I followed those walking to the west side and was joined by a reporter from the Denver Post. He asked me if I thought they were policemen. I told him that I just saw them get out of two vans driven by uniformed officers.

Before long the “black bloc” on the west side was taunting the riot police. Then all of a sudden they turned and rushed into the crowd and seconds later the riot police started firing pepper spay, mace, and other crowd control weapons into the protesters. Riot police surrounded the march along a one-block stretch of 15th Street between Court and Cleveland. A total of 96 people were arrested that evening. I spoke with a woman who watched the protest on her local Fox TV station, and she felt the arrests were justified because of how violent the black bloc had been, throwing stones through windows and taunting the police. When the arrests started I returned to the Food Not Bombs table. The twelve “black bloc” men arrived soon after and stood before me talking. After about ten minutes the two white vans returned and the “black bloc” climbed in and the vans drove away from Civic Center Park. (This is not to say that the black bloc are police agents, just that their tactics make it very easy for police provocateurs to impersonate them and disrupt demonstrations.)

Some people who were not police agents joined them in their provocations. The domination, exploitation, and destruction of capitalism is brutal and it is not difficult for the state to encourage sensitive people to buy into the romantic vision of “revolutionary” resistance personified by the black bloc.

CrimethInc published a personal account of the Denver protests from a young person who attempted to join the black bloc:

Donning a black shirt and jeans, I raced down the street on my scooter, wind in my face, to catch up to my friend. It was the first day of the Democratic National Convention and we were running late for the black bloc protest in Civic Center Park. Having grown up in Denver, an overlooked bastion of liberalism in the Rockies, I never thought I would be able to get involved in a nationally publicized protest without moving to Washington D.C. or New York. This was the first major political action in which I had the chance to participate, and I wasn’t about to miss it.

Solnit’s essay on the Oakland assault on Whole Foods is pertinent here: “This account is by a protestor who also noted in downtown Oakland that day a couple of men with military-style haircuts and brand new clothes put bandanas over their faces and began to smash stuff.” She thinks that infiltrators might have instigated the property destruction, and Copwatch’s posted video seems to document police infiltrators at Occupy Oakland.

One way to make the work of provocateurs much more difficult is to be clearly committed to tactics that the state can’t co-opt: nonviolent tactics. If an infiltrator wants to nonviolently blockade or march or take out the garbage, well, that’s useful to us. If an infiltrator sabotages us by recruiting others to commit mayhem, that’s a comment on what such tactics are good for.

Solnit quotes Oakland Occupier Sunaura Taylor: “A few people making decisions that affect everyone else is not what revolution looks like; it’s what capitalism looks like.”

Peter Marshall’s book on the history of anarchism, Demanding the Impossible, points out that “The word violence comes from the Latin violare and etymologically means violation. Strictly speaking, to act violently means to treat others without respect … A violent revolution is therefore unlikely to bring about any fundamental change in human relations. Given the anarchists’ respect for the sovereignty of the individual, in the long run it is nonviolence and not violence which is implied by anarchist values.”

Related articles

• Why civil resistance works: Strategic alternatives to violence
• The most dangerous idea in the world: nonviolent resistance

An Anarchist Bibliography

 

This is the bibliography from our upcoming release, The Anarchist Cookbook, by Keith McHenry with Chaz Bufe, introduction by Chris Hedges (October 2015).

For decades, anarchists have talked about publishing a real anarchist cookbook–a book that accurately reflects its title, a book with recipes for social change and tasty food, and accurate information on anarchism–but no one has produced one. Until now. Here’s its bibliography. It’s not meant to be comprehensive; it’s intended only as a jumping off point for further study.

(Sorry about the lack of capitalization of the book titles. The formatting did not transfer with the text.)

Anarchism

Antliff, Allan. Only a Beginning: An Anarchist Anthology. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004.
Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Portraits. Princeton, NJ: Princton University Press, 1988.
Bakunin, Michael.God and the State. New York: Dover, 1970.
Bakunin, Michael. Marxism, Freedom and the State. London: Freedom Press, 1984.
Berkman, Alexander. What Is Anarchism? Oakland: AK Press, 2003.
Bookchin, Murray. Post-Scarcity Anarchism. Oakland: AK Press, 2004.
Bookchin, Murray. Remaking Society. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1990.
Brinton, Maurice. Toward Workers Power. Oakland: AK Press, 2004.
Chomsky, Noam. On Anarchism. New York: New Press, 2013.
Dark Star Collective (eds.) Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader, New Edition. Oakland: AK Press, 2012.
Dolgoff, Sam (ed). Bakunin on Anarchy. New York: Knopf, 1972.
Ehrlich, Howard and a.h.s. boy (eds.). The Best of Social Anarchism. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2013.
Ehrlich, Howard (ed.). Reinventing Anarchy Again. Oakland: AK Press, 2001.
Fabbri, Luigi. Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism. Edmonton, Alberta: Thoughtcrime Ink, 2010.
Fernández, Frank. Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2001.
Flores Magón, Ricardo (Mitchell Verter and Chaz Bufe, eds.). Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magón Reader. Oakland: AK Press, 2005.
Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays. New York: Dover, 1969.
Goldman, Emma. Living My Life (volumes 1 & 2). New York: Dover, 1970.
Guerin, Daniel. Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. New York: Monthly Review, 1996.
Kropotkin, Peter. Anarchism and Anarchist Communism. London: Freedom Press, 1987.
Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. New York: Dover, 2011.
Kropotkin, Peter. Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1974.
Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid. Boston, Porter-Sargent, n.d.
Kroptkin, Peter. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets. New York: Dover, 1970.
Malatesta, Errico. Anarchy. London: Freedom Press, 1984.
Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. Berkeley, CA: PM Press, 2010.
Mbah, Sam and Igariwey, I.E. African Anarchism: The History of a Movement. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 1997.
Meltzer, Albert. Anarchism: Arguments For & Against. Edinburgh: AK Press, 1996.
Richards, Vernon (ed.). Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta. Berkeley, CA: PM Press, 2015.
Rocker, Rudolf. Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism. London: Freedom Press, 1988.
Rocker, Rudolf. Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. Oakland: AK Press, 2004.
Rooum, Donald. What Is Anarchism? London: Freedom Press, 1992.
Ward, Colin. About Anarchism. London: Freedom Press, 2002.
Ward, Colin. Anarchism: A Very Brief Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Ward, Colin. Anarchy in Action. London: Freedom Press, 1992.
Woodcock, George. Anarchism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

Anarchist Science Fiction

Banks, Iain M. The Player of Games,. New York: Orbit, 1988.
Banks, Iain M. Matter. New York: Orbit, 2008.
Banks, Iain M. Surface Detail New York: Orbit, 2010.
Carlsson, Chris. After the Deluge. San Francisco: Full Enjoyment Books, 2004.
Danvers, Dennis. The Fourth World. New York: Avon, 2000.
Harrison, Harry. The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted. New York: Bantam, 1987.
Hogan, James P. Voyage from Yesteryear. New York: Doubleday, 1982.
LeGuin, Ursula. The Dispossessed.New York: Harper, 1974.
Macleod, Ken. The Stone Canal. New York: Tor, 1996.
Macleod, Ken. The Cassini Division. New York: Tor, 1998.
Oakley, Nicholas P. The Watcher. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2014.
Rucker, Rudy. Software. New York: Eos, 1987.
Rucker, Rudy. Wetware. New York: Eos, 1988.
Rucker, Rudy. Freeware. New York: Eos, 1997.
Stross, Charles. Neptune’s Brood. New York: Ace, 2014.
Teflon, Zeke. Free Radicals: A Novel of Utopia and Dystopia. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2012.
Wilson, Robert Anton and Shea, Bob. The Illuminatus Trilogy. New York, Dell, 1975.

Art & Anarchism

Antiff, Allan. Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Antiff, Allan. Anarchy and Art: From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007.
Harper, Clifford. The Education of Desire: The Anarchist Graphics of Clifford Harper. London: Anarres, 1984.
Harper, Clifford. Anarchy: A Graphic Guide. London: Camden Press, 1987.
Kinney, Jay. Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection. Oakland: PM Press, 2012.
Rooum, Donald. Wildcat: Anarchist Comics by Donald Rooum. London: Freedom Press, 1985.
Rooum, Donald. Wildcat: Twenty Year Millenium, A selection celebrating 20 years of Wildcat appearances in Freedom newspaper. London: Freedom Press, 1999.
Weire, David. Anarchy and Culture: The Aesthetic Politics of Modernism. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusettes Press, 1997.

Cookbooks

Calvo, Luz. Decolonize Your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican-American Recipes for Health and Healing.Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013.
Chef AJ. Unprocessed: How to achieve vibrant health and your ideal weight, Los Angeles: CreatSpace, 2011.
Goldhammer, Alan. The Health Promoting Cookbook. Summertwon, TN: Book Publishing Co., 1997.
Hagler, Louise and Bates, Dorothy. The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook.Summertown, TN: Book Publishing Co., 1988
Kalper, Michael A. The Cookbook for People Who Love Animals. Kapa’au, HI: Gentle World, 1981.
Katzen, Mollie. The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, Mollie Katzen, Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1995
Katzen, Mollie. Moosewood Cookbook. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press,, 2000
Kloss, Jethro. Back to Eden. Santa Barbara: Woodbridge Press, 1972.
Moskowitz, Isa Chandra. Vegan with a Vengeance: Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock, Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005
Robertson, Laurel. Laurel’s Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition. Berkeley, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1971.
Shurtleff, William. The Book of Miso. New York: Ballantine, 1976.
Thomas, Ann. The Vegetarian Epicure. New York: Vintage, 1972

Direct Action

Beck, Julian. The Life of the Theatre. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1972.
Billboard Lieration Front. The Art & Science of Billboard Improvement. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2000.
Boyle, Francis. Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1987.
Crimethinc. Recipes for Disaster:An Anarchist Cookbook. Salem, OR: Crimethinc, 2005
DAM Collective. Earth First! Direct Action Manual. Earth First!, 1997.
Flynn, Elisabeth G. and Smith, Walker C. Direct Action and Sabotage! Chicago: IWW, 1991.
Foreman, Dave (ed.). Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. Chico, CA: Abbzug Press, 1993.
Hedemann, Ed. (ed.). War Resisters League Organizers Manual. New York: War Resisters League, 1981.
Lane, James H. Direct Action and Desegregation 1960–1962: Towards a Theory of the Rationalization of Protest. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishers, 1989.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Civil Disobedience. New York: Signet, 2012.

Economics

Albert, Michael. Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century. Boston: South End, 1999.
Albert, Michael. Of the People, By the People: The Case for a Participatory Economy. Oakland: AK Press, 2001.
Albert, Michael. Parecon: Life After Capitalism. New York: Verso, 2004.
Albert, Michael. Thinking Forward: Learning To Conceptualize Economic Vision. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring, 1997.
Alperovitz, Gar. America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy, 2nd Edition. Boston: Democracy Collaborative Press/Dollars and Sense, 2011.
Alperovitz, Gar. What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution. White River Jct., Vermont: Chelsea Green, 2013.
Hahnel, Robin. Of the People, By the People: The Case for a Participatory Economy. Oakland: AK Press, 2012.
Hahnel, Robin. The ABCs of Political Economy: A Modern Approach. London: Pluto Press, 2015.
Hahnel, Robin and Wright, Erik Olin. Alternatives to Capitalism: Proposals for a Democratic Economy. New Left Project, 2014.
Wolff, Richard. Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2013.
Wolff, Richard. Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012.
Wolff, Richard. Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism. San Francisco: City Lights, 2012.
Zweig, Michael. The Working Class Majority. Ithaca, New York: ILR Press, 2011.

Environment

Bertell, Rosalie. No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth. Summertwon, TN: Book Publishing Co., 2000.
Bertell, Rosalie. Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War. London: Quartet Books, 2002.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. New York: Mariner Books, 2002.
Hartmann, Thom. The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It’s Too Late. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac: Outdoor Essays & Reflections. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986.
McKibben, Bill. End of Nature. New York: Random House, 2006.
McKibben, Bill. Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. New York: Times Books, 2010.
Tokar, Brian. Redesigning Life?: The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering. London: Zed Books, 2001.
Tokar, Brian. Gene Traders: Biotechnology, World Trade, and the Globalization of Hunger. Burlington, VT: Toward Freedom, 2004.
Tokar, Brian and Eiglad, Erik. Toward Climate Justice. Porsegrunn, Norway: Communalism Press, 2010.

Food Politics

Aoki, Keith. Seed Wars: Cases and Materials on Intellectual Property and Plant Genetic Resources. Druham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007.
Bello, Walden. The Food Wars. London, Verso, 2009.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1986.
Blood Root Collective. The Political Palate. Bridgeport, CT: Sanguinaria Publishing, 1980.
Boyd, Billy Ray. For The Vegetarian in You. San Francisco: Taterhill Press, 1987.
Collins, Joseph. Food First. New York: Ballantine, 1977.
Collins, Joseph. World Hunger: Twelve Myths. New York: Grove Press, 1986.
Cribb, Julian. The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.
Gottlieb, Robert. Food Justice: Food, Health, and the Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.
McHenry, Keith. Hungry for Peace: How You Can Help End Poverty and War with Food Not Bombs. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2012.
Katz, Sandor Ellix. The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements. White River Jct., VT: Chelsea Green, 2006.
Lappé, Frances Moore. Diet for a Small Planet. New York: Random House, 1991.
Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.
Patel, Raj. Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2008.
Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
Robbins, John. Diet for a New America. Novato, CA: H.J. Kramer, 1998.
Robbins, John. The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World. Newbury Port, MA: Conari Press, 2001.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Shiva, Vandana. The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Boston: South End Press, 2007.
Shiva, Vandana (ed). Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed. Boston: South End Press, 2007.
Shiva, Vandana. Soil Not Oil. Boston: South End Press, 2008
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2003.
Tokar, Brian and Magdoff, Fred. Agriculture & Food in Crisis: Conflict, Resistance and Renewal. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010.
Tuttle, Will. The World Peace Diet, Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony. New York: Lantern Books, 2005.
Wolfe, David. Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2009.

Gardening

Bartholomew, Mel. All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition: The Revolutionary Way to Grow More In Less Space. Minneapolis: Cool Springs Press, 2013.
Brookbank, George. The Desert Gardener’s Calendar: Your Month-by-Month Guide. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999.
Brookbank, George. Desert Gardening: The Complete Guide. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1991.
Coburn, Heather. Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community. White River Jct., VT: Chelsea Green, 2010.
Fell, Derek. Vertical Gardening: Grow Up, Not Out, for More Vegetables and Flowers in Much Less Space. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2011.
Fukuoka, Masanobu. The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming. New York: NYRB Clasics, 2008.
Logsdown, Gene. Holy Shit: Managing Manure To Save Mankind. White River Jct., VT: Chelsea Green, 2010.
Markham, Brett. Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2010.
Madigan, Carleen. The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre! North Adamas, MA: Storey, 2009.
Nyhuis, Jane. Desert Harvest: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening in Arid Lands. Tucson: Growing Connections, 1982.
Owens, David. Extreme Gardening: How to Grow Organic in the Hostile Deserts. Phoenix: Poco Verde, 2000.
Smith, Edward. The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible. North Adams, Massachusetts: Storey Publishing, 2009.
Wilson, Peter Lamborn and Weinberg, Bill (eds). Avant Gardening Ecological Struggles in the City & the World. New York: Autonomedia, New York,1999.

Labor

Boyer, Richard and Marais, Herbert. Labor’s Untold Story. UE, 1979.
Brecher, Jeremy. Strike! (exp. ed.). Oakland: PM Press, 2014.
Brinton, Maurice. For Workers’ Power. Oakland: AK Press, 2004.
Lynd, Staughton. Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below. Chicago: Haymarket, 2014.
Ness, Immanuel. New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism. Oakland: PM Press, 2014.
Ness, Immanuel and Azzellino, Dario (eds.). Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present. Chicago: Haymarket, 2011.
Pannekoek, Anton. Workers’ Councils. Oakland: AK Press, 2002.
Thompson, Fred and Bekken, Jon. The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First 100 Years. Chicago: IWW, 2006.

Nonviolence

Cohen, Tom. Three Who Dared. New York: Avon, 1971.
Gandhi, Mohandas. Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Gandhi, Mohandas. The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas. New York: Vintage, 2002.
King, Martin Luther Jr. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
King, Martin Luther Jr. Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Harper Collins, New York, 1994.
King, Martin Luther Jr. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2001.
Peace Pilgrim. Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words.. Santa Fe, NM: Ocean Tree Books, 1992.
Sharp, Gene. Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential. Manchester, NH: Extending Horizons Books, 2005.
Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973.

Political / Social Theory & Change

Bey, Hakim. TAZ: Temporary Autonomous Zones. New York: Autonomedia, 1985.
Biehl, Janet. Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics. Boston: South End, 1991.
Biehl, Janet and Staudenmaier, Peter. Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience. Oakland: AK Press, `1995.
Bookchin, Murray. Remaking Society. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1990.
Bookchin, Murray. Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm. Edinburgh: AK Press, 1995.
Bookchin, Murray. Re-enchanting Humanity. New York: Cassell, 1995.
Carlsson, Chris. Nowtopia. Oakland: AK Press, 2008.
Castle, Marie Alena. Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2013.
Chomsky Noam. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. Boston: South End Press, 1989.
Chomsky, Noam. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Boston, South End Press, 1988.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 2000.
French, Marilyn. Beyond Power, On Women, Men and Morals. New York: Ballantine, 1986.
Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. New York: Touchstone, 1992.
Gelderloos, Peter. Consensus. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2006.
Goodman, Paul. Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals. New York: Vintage, 1962.
Greenleaf, Phyllis. Our Changing Sex Roles. Somerville, MA: New England Free Press, 1979.
Grogan, Emmett. Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1990.
Hedges. Chris. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. New York: Nation Books, 2008.
Hedges, Chris and Sacco, Joe. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. New York: Nation, Books, 2014.
Hedges. Chris. Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. New York: Nation Books, 2015.
Hedges. Chris. Wages of Rebellion. New York: Nation Books, 2015.
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Picador, 2009.
Klein, Naomi. No Logo. New York: Picador, 2009.
Knabb, Ken (ed.). Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2007.
Korten, David C. The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007.
Korten, David C. When Corporations Rule the World . San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2001.
Kropotkin, Peter. Memoirs of a Revolutionist. New York: Doubleday, 1962.
Kunstler, James Howard. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005.
Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine, 1992.
Maximoff, Gregory Petrovich. The Guillotine at Work: The Leninist Counter-Revolution. Sanday, Orkney: Cienfuegos Press, 1979.
McHenry, Keith. Hungry for Peace: How You Can Help End Poverty and War with Food Not Bombs. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2012.
Morris, Brian. Social Change and Social Defense. London: Freedom Press, 1993.
Ott, Jeff. My World: Ramblings of an Aging Gutter Punk. North Hills, CA: Hopeless Records, 2000.
Reich, Wilhelm. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980.
Ross, John. ¡Zapatistas! Making Another World Possible: Chronicles of Resistance 2000–2006. New York: Nation Books, 2007.
Roy, Arundhati. Public Power in the Age of Empire. New York: Seven Stories, 2004.
Sampson, Ronald V. The Psychology of Power. New York: Vintage, 1965.
Scahill, Jeremy. Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. New York: Nation Books, 2014.
Shiva, Vandava. Staying Alive. Boston: South End Press, 2010.
Spring, Joel. A Primer of Libertarian Education. New York: Free Life Editions, 1975.
Sprouse, Martin, ed. Sabotage in the American Workplace. San Francisco: Pressure Drop Press, 1992.
Starhawk. The Spiral Dance. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.
Taibbi, Matt. The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2011.
Taibbi, Matt. Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2009.
Taibbi, Matt. The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014.
Uzcátegui, Rafael. Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle. Tucson: See Sharp Press 2010.
Vaneigem, Raoul. The Revolution of Everyday Life. Oakland: PM Press, 2012.
Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2009.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper, 2005.

Poverty and Homelessness

Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums. New York: Verso, 2007.
Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist, Dorothy Day. New York: HarperOne, 1996.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Holt, 2008.
Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove, 2005.
Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum, 2000.
Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard. Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. New York: Vintage, 1979.
Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. New York: Vintage, 1993.
Roy, Arundhati. Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Chicago: Haymarket Press, 2014.
Steinberg, Michael. Homes Not Jails! San Francisco: Black Rain Press, 1998.
Wasserman, Jason and Clair, Jeffrey. At Home on the Street: People, Poverty, and a Hidden Culture of Homelessness. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009.

Russian Revolution

Avrich, Paul. Kronstadt, 1921. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Berkman, Alexander. The Bolshevik Myth. London: Pluto Press, 1989.
Berkman, Alexander. The Russian Tragedy. London: Phoenix, 1986.
Brinton, Maurice. The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control. London: Solidarity, 1970. (now a part of For Workers’ Power. Oakland: AK Press, 2004)
Goldman, Emma. My Disillusionment in Russia. New York: Dover, 2003.
Goldman, Emma. My Further Disillusionment in Russia. New York: Dover, 2003.
Maximoff, Gregory Petrovich. The Guillotine at Work: The Leninist Counter-Revolution. Sanday, Orkney: Cienfuegos Press, 1979.
Voline (E.K. Eichenbaum). The Unknown Revolution. Detroit: Black & Red, 1974.

Spanish Revolution

Bolloten, Burnett. The Grand Camouflage. New York: Prager, 1961.
Bolloten, Burnett. The Spanish Civil War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
Bookchin, Murray. The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years (1868–1936). Oakland: AK Press, 2001.
Borkenau, Franz. The Spanish Cockpit. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1971.
Dolgoff, Sam (ed.). The Anarchist Collectives. New York: Free Life Editions, 1974.
Gómez Casas, Juan. Anarchist Organization: The History of the FAI. Montreal: Black Rose, 1986.
Leval, Gaston. Collectives in the Spanish Revolution. London: Freedom Press, 1975.
Mintz, Frank. Anarchism and Workers Self-Management in Revolutionary Spain. Oakland: AK Press, 2013.
Peirats, José. Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution. London: Freedom Press, 1987.
Porter, David (ed.). Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution. Oakland: AK Press, 2006.