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maestro_cerrotorcido's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
5.0
This is a must read for anyone wanting to learn about and understand Anarchism. It is definitely great for a newbie or someone wanting a general overview of Anarchism.
sean_2005's review against another edition
2.0
Very poor written book, not analogical and flowy, but rather chaotic and rather boring. I could be interested in a few pages, then 60 pages of boredom, than another good 20. Wasn't worth it, Wouldn't recommend for new anarchists.
rebecavleal's review against another edition
- Não é propriamente um trabalho de opinião mas sim de apresentação da história, influencies e ramificações do anarquismo.
- “the government of no one”: the problem with this nomenclature is that it situated anarchism in a framework of government that uses the rejection of anarchy for its justification. So anarchy immediately becomes a condition of disorder. The prevailing view in political thought is that human beings want to escape from the inconvenience or violence of anarchy and, because they have the wit to do so (uniquely, we are told), they submit to government.
- Anarchists reject pinpointing the origin of the ideology, its boundaries, and major/relevant thinkers. They want to avoid attributing the power of anarchist invention to a collection of individuals of particular genius - characteristically, white men - who cleverly articulated a great idea, parceled it up and exported it across the world.
- IWA: the International Working men’s Association was broken up in 1872 and could be said it was roughly split into two groups/ideologies: marxists and anarchists. Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin were two proeminent figures of both movements within the IWA and had a long-lasting ideological discussion.
- -Anarchy means no domination or authority of one man over another, yet you call that “disorder”. A system which advocates no such “order” as shall require the services of rogues and thieves to defend it you call “disorder”.
- Conceito de wage slavery
- The practical implementation of law removes the power of rule-making from the majority of the people it manages. People know what law is, they know that it commands obedience and that transgression will result in punishment. However, most people have little knowledge of the content and scope of the law and lack the technical ability to participate meaningfully in making, interpreting or enforcing law. Sigmund Engländer attacked law because it facilitated exploitation and dependency and because he thought lawmakers assumed they knew what was best for everyone. Law was inherently dominating.
- Communal property and living in indigenous communities: the woods, the waters, and the lands are held in common. All were free to take what they needed to build cabins and irrigate crops. Tillable lands were allotted by mutual agreement before sowing, and reverted to the tribe after harvesting, for re-allotment. Pasture, the right to collect fuel, we’re for all. Neighbor assisted neighbor to build his cabin, ploughing his ground, to gather and store his crop. Os colonizadores criaram espaços “privados” e atribuíram-nos a si próprios, uma vez que consideravam que as comunidades indígenas não sendo “book-educated” não eram inteligentes o suficiente e nem a arma da educação resolveria isso.
- Dúvida minha: o anarquismo parece defender que a educação controlada pelo estado é uma opressão e (o estado define o currículo e a sua apresentação e segrega aquelas que não são “bons” o suficiente no seu sistema) que educa para a produtividade. O anarquismo sugere uma educação gerida pela comunidade e focada na experiência (aprender nas fábricas, etc), e diz que esta educação tem como objectivo a formação de um membro crítico da sociedade. Como é que educação tao foçada na experiência laboral prática e com pouca academia permite abstração suficiente para tal pensamento crítico?
- Accompaniment and skill-sharing: an invitation to newly trained lawyers, doctors, engineers, poets, artists and teachers - professionals of all stripes - to set aside personal career ambitions to benefit the least well off and for the sake of social transformation. (Using specialist skills or status to support disadvantaged people). Accompaniment is linked to protection work, that is, standing with vulnerable groups or un-newsworthy people to prevent state attacks against them. (Disseminating research findings to expose repressive practices, providing translation, contesting phoney science, helping to prevent deportation and advancing or protecting land claims against settler governments and corporate exploitation).
- Evolutionist and revolutionist movements within anarchism: evolutionists defendem uma mudança gradual e pacífica; os revolutionists consideram ingénua acreditar que a mudança necessária acontecerá sem resistência da classe governadora e por isso afirmam que violência será necessária.
- Outra divisão de movimentos dentro anarquismo é communist vs. individualist (a criação de comunidades, por vezes forçada, e ação em conjunto e a ação individual, respectivamente).
- Evolutionists & organizationalists: Proudhonist federalists; Evolutionists & anti-organizationalists: Proudhonist individualists & Stirnerite amoralists; Revolutionists & organizationalists: Anarchist-syndicalists & Platformists & Insurrectionists; Revolutionists & anti-organizationalists: Revolutionary individualists.
- Class-struggle anarchism: usually feminist, anti-racist, and green, but first and foremost anti-capitalism egalitarians who struggle against bourgeois privilege and state power. Engage more readily with other leftist movements outside of anarchism. Tend to be revolutionist and organizationalists.
- Post-left anarchism: “anarchy is chaos and chaos is anarchy”. Seeks to be anti-political, hedonistic, and proudly individualist. Positioned against anarchy-leftist fundamentalisms (such as class-struggle anarchism and anarchy-syndicalism), which for this current are organizations that promise social transformation but negate its possibility.
- Small “a” anarchism and social anarchism are evolutionist and organizationalist currents but seem to me a bit vague in their positioning to other topics (feminism, racism, etc). Small “a” anarchism mobilizes networked groups and associations in mass demonstrations, using self-organization, direct action, revolutionary union strike tactics and consensual participatory democracy as tools to contest capitalism. O social anarchism parece-me mais “uma forma de estar”, como as pequenas comunidades criadas aqui e ali que se focam no seu projeto apenas.
- Marx believed only the industrial workers could lead the revolution, agrarian workers were dismissed by him (calling it “the idiocy of rural live”). He and Engles also created the concept of lumpenproletariat (usually vaganbonds and prostitutes) which they considered an “underclass” and “social scum”.
- Statement from the UK Anarchidt Federation Women’s Caucus: “to talk about privilege reveals what is normal to those without the oppression, yet cannot be taken for granted by those with it. To talk about homophobia alone reveals the existence of prejudices, stereotypes about how gay men and lesbian women behave, perhaps, or violence targeted against people of their sexuality. (…) To talk about straight privilege, however, shows the other side of the system, the invisible side: what behavior is considered ‘typical’ for straight people? There isn’t one, straight isn’t treated like a sexual category, it is treated like the absence of ‘gay’. You don’t have to worry about whether you come across as ‘too straight’ when you’re going to a job interview or whether your straight friends will think you’re denying your straightness if you don’t dress or talk straight enough, or whether your gay friends will be uncomfortable if you take them to a straight club (…). This analysis goes beyond worries of what we consider normal and neutral, what we consider different and other, what needs explaining, what’s taken as read, the prejudices in favour of being straight aren’t recognizable as prejudices, because they’re built into our very perceptions of what is the default way to be.”
- Se o anarquismo fosse sempre fiel a ele próprio e contra todo o domínio (incluído o do homem), não seria necessário haver um ou mais movimentos anarquismo feministas.
- Questão em aberto do livro: como se evita a opressão/domínio se uma comunidade se regime por decisão em maioria? Não passam A e B se se juntarem a ter poder sobre C? Um teórico anarquista defende que não será opressão pois numa comunidade anarquista qualquer sujeito se pode remover a qualquer momento e o “governo” e as regras podem ser repensadas em qualquer altura. (Eu própria não estou convencida até que ponto é que isto resolve o problem da opressão em maiorias, pois apenas isola as minorias do grupo).
- Democracy lauds ‘freedom of speech, of the press, of the association, as well as equality before the law’s but it ‘leaves the principle of capitalist private property untouched’. It thereby ‘leaves the bourgeoisie it’s entitlement to hold within its hands the entire economy of the country, all of the press, education, science and art’. Democracy ‘isn’t merely one of the facets of bourgeois dictatorship, concealed behind the camouflage of notional political freedoms and democratic assurances’. Noam Chomsky defends that democracy is a powerful force of the people for self-government which has been co-opted and corrupted by the elites in order to maintain minority rule. Rebecca Solnit argues, real democracy means ‘that everyone has a voice, that no one gets away with things just because of their wealth, power, race or gender’.
- Sugestões de guidelines para o método de discussão “consensus” são muito interessantes.
- The amenities that the states provide (e.g. police or homens do lixo) only mitigate the worst excesses that they perpetuate (e.g. o crime existe maioritariamente devido a desigualdades sociais, inacessibilidade de apoio psicológico, etc).
- Chomsky: Freedom of speech is a right more protected in the US than any other country I know, but it functions in a political culture marked by colossal inequality and the repression of independent thought.
- The surprising logic of crisis morality is that the behaviors that statists observe when disaster strikes are the same that anarchists promote for ‘normal’ times: when states break down, the anarchy that reigns is often more like the condition anarchists describe than the chaos that statists warn against.
- The capacity to withdraw consent and/or to assert autonomy is universal but voluntary submission is far more common than disobedience and insubordination. From this point of view the expectation that anarchists can anarchize by correcting slurs about anarchism, entering into dialogue about ethics or even forging solidarity through action seems hopelessly optimistic. Disobedience is not routine for most people most of the time. And where disobedience occurs, it is often partial. Even rebels tend to focus on the opportunities that exist to extend the benefits that privileged groups enjoy. They rarely question the worth of privileges themselves or the institutional mechanisms that are required for their delivery. As Goldman might have argued, when women fight to enter the boardrooms they reinforce the status of the corporations and stock markets.
- Convergence vs Disjuncture approaches to spreading Anarchist ideologies (the first is inclusive, solidaristic, and believes habit and complaisance are the barriers. The second is exclusive, discordant, and believes internalized norms, social hypnosis, and complicance are the barriers).
barry_x's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
3.5
A decent enough attempt to map the history and practice of anarchism and anarchist practice since the time of Proudhon to present date.
Kinna tries to present the history of anarchism and draws out the major threads and themes within anarchist discourse and the areas of divergence sensitively without weighing in on which approaches she prefers. It's a reasonable entry point into the history of anarchism and the aspirations of anarchists but I don't think it makes a particular inspiring case for anarchism. Perhaps because I am broadly familiar with anarchist concepts there seemed little new in the book which meant I found it interesting but not particularly engaging.
The book maps some of the early European figures, it traces the early divergences along the lines of individualism and social anarchism with some really helpful mapping (I find that when I think of anarchism it is rare to stand on one side of the divergence here, recognising that I personally place both these strands really high in my values and principles - I imagine most anarchists are the same. Indeed, I find questioning by some politicos rather bizarre when they ask, 'but what kind of anarchist are you!!). Likewise, there is some really useful mapping of anarchist approaches from insurrectionist and revolutionary approaches to 'small a anarchism' - a term I hadn't heard before. I've realised that as I have got older I am far more aligned to 'small a anarchism', which I have interpreted as living as anarchist a life as possible as an example in a non-anarchist world. A case in point, some of the work I am doing with people right now is about removing hierarchies and where they exist removing the influence of hierarchies and exploring ways of 'getting things done' collaboratively and consensually. I am open about it, but I am sharing with people that this way of working is what anarchists do as we explore decisions being made differently....
I digress, but I hope this shows that the book has given me some value, if only to think about my own approaches a little more.
There is some discussion about anarchist approaches to the future and the concept of utopias (or not!). I think most anarchists dream of a better world but are under no illusions that it is hard work and also always a work in progress. There are several pages wasted in my view sharing the utopic fantasy of Hans Widmer which I interpreted as, 'this is the dream of one man and far away from how a community may imagine a future'. There are also conclusions which are a bit downbeat suggesting that anarchism isn't possible and has failed. I don't accept that - I think society in some cases changes very quickly and in others very slowly. In the absence of a state like body controlling everything anarchism often occurs under the radar and rather than a revolution overnight, anarchists are continually building a future in small ways - preconfiguring the world we want to live in. It's a constant work in progress.
I really like the tight focus of the book - particularly how it draws in the different strands of thought without bringing in adjacent political approaches which are not anarchist (like the confused individuals who are the so-called anarcho-capitalists). I also like that about a fifth of the book is mini-biographies of anarchists mentioned in the book - this moves the book away from the usual three of Kropotkin, Bakunin and Proudhon and is inclusive. There were a few I hadn't heard of before so it was good to read about them. It's a big bugbear of mine when anarchism slips into 'great man-ism' so this was welcome. Anarchist thought didn't stop in 1921 when Kropotkin died!
A good third of the book is footnotes to Kinna's sources - again, this is welcome because the curious can then go and learn more from those whose ideas she tries to pull together.
I guess this is where the book fails to a degree though - I don't think anyone reading it will go, 'right I am an anarchist now' and whilst the mapping of the history and ideas and practices is a great attempt, because the book is quite short it is all at surface level - there is actual very little discussion of 'anarchy in action' other than a few paragraphs here and there.
The book is quite accessible though but will likely leave readers wanting more - the book isn't half as dense as 'An Anarchist FAQ' but if this whets the appetite I'd recommend this text for getting into more detail https://theanarchistlibrary.org/libra...
Likewise, I think many of the texts referenced will be available in here https://theanarchistlibrary.org/speci...
A good book, which sadly left me wanting just a little bit more.
(I have noticed that the author Ruth Kinna has recently done a podcast with Little Bigger Anarchism https://anchor.fm/little-bigger-anarc...) (less)