anarchism
Anarchism is a social movement that seeks liberation from oppressive systems of control including but not limited to the state, capitalism, racism, sexism, speciesism, and religion. Anarchists advocate a self-managed, classless, stateless society without borders, bosses, or rulers where everyone takes collective responsibility for the health and prosperity of themselves and the environment.
Theory
Introductory Anarchist Theory
- Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Pyotr Kropotkin
- Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman
- Anarchy Works by Peter Genderloos
- Anarchism: A Beginner's Guide by Ruth Kinna
- Anarchism and Its Aspirations by Cindy Milstein
- Anarchy In Action by Colin Ward
- On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky & Nathan Schneider
- Anarchy by Errico Malatesta
Anarcho-Capitalism
Discord Legacy A collaborative doc of books and other materials compiled by the #anarchism channel on the Discord, containing texts and materials for all sorts of tendencies and affinities.
The Theory List :) https://hackmd.io/AJzzPSyIQz-BRxfY3fKBig?view Feel free to make an account and edit to your hearts content, or just DM me your suggestions ^~^ - The_Dawn
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He treats Marx’s theory of alienation as Marx’s definition of capitalism.
He misreads “co-operative property of the workers themselves” as supporting predominantly workplace-level ownership.
The Engels “national capitalist” quotation is badly truncated conceptually. Engels absolutely does say that nationalization by the existing bourgeois state does not magically abolish capitalism. But the same passage proceeds to say that the proletariat seizes political power and initially transforms the means of production into state property.
The Chairman Mao quotation about “not eliminating capitalism” is removed from its stage-specific context. Chairman Mao was describing the New Democratic transition of an overwhelmingly agrarian, semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. In the same 1949 analysis he called for moving from an agricultural to an industrial country and from New Democracy toward socialism, with the state-owned sector as the socialist leading sector.
“If socialism needs capitalist mechanisms to develop productive forces, then capitalism must be superior to socialism” is a non sequitur. Transitional concessions reflect the inherited material structure of society, not the abstract superiority of capitalism.
He compares forms while disregarding class content.
Also several of his arguments are internally inconsistent
He says anarchists do not fetishize cooperatives, then repeatedly uses cooperative workplace control as his principal empirical test of socialism.
He says anarchism is not opposed to transition, but defines the Marxist transition as capitalist because it still contains transitional categories.
He accepts economic and political compromises in Spain but treats comparable compromises in Russia or China as proof of counterrevolution.
He excuses anarchist projects for being defeated externally while using external defeat against ML projects.
He says local institutions must federate into an integrated economy but treats centralized integrated economic decision-making as worker alienation.
He says capitalism can only be overcome through long historical transformation, yet faults the Bolsheviks for not abolishing money, commodity relations and inherited bourgeois norms almost immediately.
He correctly insists that socialism cannot merely mean better welfare, but then fails to seriously analyze the abolition of private capitalist ownership and planned social investment because his definition already excludes state-socialist ownership.
He rejects state ownership because ownership must belong to society itself, but never adequately solves how “society itself” makes binding macroeconomic decisions except through federated institutions, which are themselves organized political power under another name.