Discussion on ‘Anarchism’
‘Tuesday Group’, Schumacher College, 2 May 2006; handout:
Anarchism is the version of radical politics I have been drawn to because it seems to fit my project of Designing for Revolution, which has three aspects:
This discussion is an opportunity to test these ideas by comparing them with other approaches to world change favoured by members of this group. |
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My project is about achieving revolution, not just theorising about it. I believe revolution is possible, and it is crucial to recognise that belief is a different kind of thing from truth. Philosophy is ‘conceptions of life and the world’. (Russell, p.13) Philosophers are both effects (of their social circumstances) and (if they are lucky) causes (of beliefs which mould the politics and institutions of later ages). (Ibid. p.7). Marx said: ‘Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, but the real task is to alter it.’ (Ibid. p.749) There is an urgency to that aspiration, which I share. Any scheme of radical world change has two aspects: what it seeks to abolish and what it seeks to establish in its stead.
Sources:
Definitions & Theory
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Glossary: www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/n.htm ‘What is Anarchist Communism?’ by Toby Thrall, http://www.cvoice.org/cv2thrall.htm ‘An Anarchist FAQ’, index: http://www.libcom.org/thought/faq/secAcon.html, ‘What is anarchism?’: http://www.libcom.org/thought/faq/secA1.html Bookchin, ‘An Ecological Society’, http://www.des4rev.org.uk/bookchinsociety.htm Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The emergence and dissolution of hierarchy, revised edition (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1991) pp.340-7 |
History |
‘Marxism & Anarchism’, www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/index.htm ‘“Notes on Anarchism” in For Reasons of State’, Noam Chomsky, 1970 www.spunk.org/texts/intro/sp000281.html |
Urgency |
‘The Crash’ by Patrick Whitefield, Permaculture Magazine No.47, pp. 51-2, http://www.des4rev.org.uk/The%20Crash.htm ‘The planet’s “second superpower”’, in Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (London: Penguin, 2003), pp.235-6 ‘It’s capitalism or a habitable planet – you can’t have both’, Robert Newman, The Guardian, Thursday February 2, 2006 http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1700409,00.html |
Activism |
World in Common, ‘Where we stand’, http://www.worldincommon.org/join.html#corestatement Derek Wall, Babylon And Beyond: The Economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements (London: Pluto Press, 2005) ‘The New Anarchists’, article by David Graeber, ‘Practising direct democracy’, http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR24704.shtml ‘Anarchism tomorrow’, Colin Ward, www.redpepper.org.uk/cularch/xanarchy.html ‘The Left Needs More Socialism’, Ronald Aronson, www.thenation.com/doc/20060417/aronson The Red & Anarchist Action Network, Principles and Direction, http://www.redanarchist.org/texts/p&d.html |