I've been rereading this recently. I first read it just over a year ago, on the recommendation of a couple of anarchoid mates who thought it was fantastic. Thought it was mostly good a year ago, and still do now, but I have more reservations and qualifications. Generally i like his writing style and method - I do think its useful not to pull all of the Marxist clichés out immediately. It also means that anarcho types can get into it, which is important i think because they can learn a lot from libertarian marxist approaches to the state (I did, and consider myself more of a libertarian communist now, not that it matters massively).
So heres what I like: The state as a social relationship, not as an exterior and fetishised object (which seems common in anarchist theory).
I think seeing both capitalism and the state as things that are continually constituted is really useful.
Marxism as a politics of subjective resistance – where this goes can depend though, as aufheben's review on here pointed out.
I dont like the uncritical cheerleading for the Zapatistas. I definitely think they should be supported, but not without reservations.
I also think that although it is important that class doesn't act as a label, as another a priori category in identity politics (though self-perception is important), his ideas about how as alienation is universal, proletarianisation is universal are unconvincing. His professors-are-proletarians stuff was a bit embarassing. I think that questions of hierarchy and co-ordination are important, and that class needs to be understood in relation to this.
I'd be interested to see what other people think about this book.
