ABC of anarchism - Alexander Berkman
First published in 1929, this book by Alexander Berkman answers some of the charges made against it and presents the case for communist anarchism. Thorough and well stated, it is today regarded as a classic statement of the cause's goals and methods.
[i]"Our social institutions are founded on certain ideas; as long as the latter are generally believed, the institutions built on them are safe. Government remains strong because people think political authority and legal compulsion are necessary. Capitalism will continue as long as such an economic system is considered adequate and just.
Introductions to political theories
libcom.org's clearly written short introductions to various political philosophies related to libertarian communism with which we are sympathetic.
Primitive communism, barbarism and the origins of class society - Lionel Sims
Submitted by geraldi on Feb 15 2012 17:47
Lionel Sims on primitive communism, in particular examining the claims of Frederick Engels.
In 1884 Friedrich Engels made a remarkable claim in Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. We are a revolutionary species, he says. We were born in complete equality and fraternity. Women were respected, women were leaders. There were no social classes, there was no state, there was no filth, there was no war.
Last Editorial - Radical Chains
Submitted by griddle on Feb 10 2012 17:43
"The message that the end of stalinism and the defeat of communism are the same has not been effectively contested. Yet the irony is that if the working class had never tended to communism, the likes of Hobsbawm, Marxism Today, the official communists parties or even Stalin's USSR would have been neither possible nor necessary."
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radical chains no.5
LAST EDITORIAL
Situating the Situationists - Radical Chains
Submitted by griddle on Feb 10 2012 17:37
A critique of The Most Radical Gesture; The Situationist International in the Post Modern Age by Sadie Plant.
radical chains
SITUATING THE SITUATIONISTS - THE MOST MODERN DISCOURSE
born again
The abyss opens: The rise and fall of Keynesianism - John Holloway
The state of the world economy is proving John Maynard Keynes right in his claim that capitalism requires significant state spending to prosper.
[b] This article, in the autonomist Marxist tradition, shows how the capitalist class were only able to implement Keynes's policies in the context of the Russian revolution and World War Two. Then, a mere 20 years later, they were forced to retreat from Keynesianism in the face of the workers' revolts of the 1960s and 1970s.
The housing monster - prole.info
A beautifully illustrated book by prole.info which takes one seemingly simple thing - a house - and examines the social relations around it. From the construction site to the city, from gender roles to unions, what starts as a look at the house broadens into a critique of capitalism as a whole.
Where is politics?
Submitted by Joseph Kay on Dec 7 2011 00:44
This question might seem odd to some. To seasoned libertarian communists, the answer ‘everyday life’ trips off the tongue without a second thought. But it seems like a productive question to work through in light of recent events, from the parliamentary expenses scandal to the August riots to the #occupy movement. So, where is politics?
Hunter-Gatherers and the Mythology of the Market - John Gowdy
Submitted by elf999 on Nov 2 2011 16:04
Marx claimed that "the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of ... modern capitalist societies." This claim has since been vindicated by numerous studies which are neatly summarised in this entry from the prestigious Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. As the Encyclopedia says: "Hunting and gathering was humanity's first and most successful adaptation, occupying at least 90 percent of human history. Until 12,000 years ago, all humans live this way."
An irony of modern life is that, in spite of spectacular increases in material abundance and centuries of technological progress, hunter-gatherers, people who have lived with almost no material possessions, have enjoyed lives in many ways as satisfying and rewarding as lives led in the industrial North.
How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways - Peter Gray
Submitted by elf999 on Nov 2 2011 15:24
Is it true that hunter-gatherers were peaceful egalitarians? The answer is yes.
If just one anthropologist had reported this, we might assume that he or she was a starry-eyed romantic who was seeing things that weren't really there, or was a liar. But many anthropologists, of all political stripes, regarding many different hunter-gatherer cultures, have told the same general story. ... One anthropologist after another has been amazed by the degree of equality, individual autonomy, indulgent treatment of children, cooperation, and sharing in the hunter-gatherer culture that he or she studied.
During the twentieth century, anthropologists discovered and studied dozens of different hunter-gatherer societies, in various remote parts of the world, who had been nearly untouched by modern influences. Wherever they were found - in Africa, Asia, South America, or elsewhere; in deserts or in jungles - these societies had many characteristics in common.
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