Category: Strategic theory

Theory relating to how authors think we should work towards our political project, deciding the best means to use for achieving our desired ends.

For ex. : Rudolf Rocker – Anarcho-Syndicalism, Social Anarchism and Organisation – FARJ

Categories
20th century Analytic theory Anarchism Books Global South and Central America Strategic theory Values theory

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)

Author(s)

Paulo Freire

Contents

“The radical, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a ‘circle of certainty’ within which reality is also imprisoned. On the contrary, the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.

The pedagogy of the oppressed, the introductory outlines of which are presented in the following pages, is a task for radicals; it cannot be carried out by sectarians. […]
From these pages I hope at least the following will endure: my trust in the people, and my faith in men and women, and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love.”

Paulo Freire

Leave a comment below with a valid email adress (it will not be published) to request this book.

Categories
18th century 19th century Analytic theory Anarchism Books Capitalism Europe Socialism Statism - Representationism Strategic theory Values theory

The Method of Freedom : An Errico Malatesta Reader (2014)

Author(s)

Errico Malatesta

Davide Turcato (editor)

Contents

“In his writing, Malatesta has the rare ability of being both deep and clear. This is best illustrated by an example. In the Anarchy pamphlet, which we reprint in this volume, Malatesta defines anarchy in a single sentence :

“Anarchy, in common with socialism, has as its basis, its point of departure, its essential environment, equality of conditions; its beacon is solidarity and freedom is its method.”

In its reference to the standard values of the French Revolution, égalité, fraternité, and liberté, the definition may seem a cliché. Yet, behind its deceptive simplicity, it expresses a whole, original conception of anarchism, which rests on the role assigned to each of those standard values. Equality of conditions means common ownership of the means of production, for there cannot be equality of conditions when a class monopolizes the means of production. Thus, a socialist society is being described here. Yet socialism is not an end-point; it is just a point of departure of an open-ended process. The beacon of that process is solidarity.

By assigning the driver’s seat of social evolution to an intentionally pursued value Malatesta is expressing a voluntarist view, in contrast to the marxist emphasis on the development of productive forces. And by assigning that seat to solidarity he is rejecting individualism. Finally, by advocating freedom as a method Malatesta is re-asserting free initiative in contrast to authoritarian socialism.

Malatesta is offering no blueprint of the future society, yet his definition is strongly characterized in terms of the process: he is describing an experimentalist, pluralist, socialist open society.”

Davide Turcato

Leave a comment below with a valid email adress (it will not be published) to request this book.

Categories
20th century Analytic theory Anarchism Books Direct democracy Europe Futures theory North America Social Ecology Socialism Strategic theory

Post-scarcity Anarchism (1971)

Author(s)

Murray Bookchin

Contents

“Today the greatest strength of capitalism lies in its ability to subvert revolutionary goals by the ideology of domination. What accounts for this strength is the fact that ‘bourgeois ideology’ is not merely bourgeois.

Capitalism is the heir of history, the legatee of all the repressive features of earlier hierarchical societies, and bourgeois ideology has been pieced together from the oldest elements of social domination and conditioning—elements so very old, so intractable, and so seemingly unquestionable, that we often mistake them for ‘human nature’.

There is no more telling commentary on the power of this cultural legacy than the extent to which the socialist project itself is permeated by hierarchy, sexism and renunciation. From these elements come all the social enzymes that catalyze the everyday relationships of the bourgeois world—and of the so-called ‘radical movement’.

Hierarchy, sexism and renunciation do not disappear with ‘democratic centralism’, a ‘revolutionary leadership’, a ‘workers’ state’, and a ‘planned economy’. On the contrary, hierarchy, sexism, and renunciation function all the more effectively if centralism appears to be ‘democratic’, if leaders appear to be ‘revolutionaries’, if the state appears to belong to the ‘workers’, and if commodity production appears to be ‘planned’.

Insofar as the socialist project fails to note the very existence of these elements, much less their vicious role, the ‘revolution’ itself becomes a facade for counterrevolution.”

Murray Bookchin

Leave a comment below with a valid email adress (it will not be published) to request this book.

Categories
Analytic theory Anarchism Books Capitalism Global Longue durée Social Ecology Strategic theory

A Radical Green Political Theory (1999)

Author(s)

Alan Carter

Contents

“This volume is the first systematic, comprehensive and cogent environmental political philosophy. It exposes the relationships between the ever-worsening environmental crises, the nature of prevailing economic structures and the role of the modern state and concludes that the combination of these factors is driving humanity towards destruction.
Innovative, provocative and cutting-edge, A Radical Green Political Theory will be of enormous value to all those with an interest in the environment, political theory and moral and political philosophy.”

Figures

Leave a comment below with a valid email adress (it will not be published) to request this book.

Categories
20th century 21st century Analytic theory Antifascism Books Europe North America Strategic theory White supremacy

Antifa : The Anti-fascist Handbook (2017)

Author(s)

Mark Bray

Contents

“This book takes seriously the transhistorical terror of fascism and the power of conjuring the dead when fighting back. It is an unabashedly partisan call to arms that aims to equip a new generation of anti-fascists with the history and theory necessary to defeat the resurgent Far Right.

Based on sixty-one interviews with current and former anti-fascists from seventeen countries in North America and Europe, it expands our geographical and temporal outlook to contextualize opposition to Trump and the alt-right within a much wider and broader terrain of resistance.

Antifa is the first transnational history of postwar anti-fascism in English and the most comprehensive in any language. It argues that militant anti-fascism is a reasonable, historically informed response to the fascist threat that persisted after 1945 and that has become especially menacing in recent years.”

Introduction

Leave a comment below with a valid email adress (it will not be published) to request this book.