Black anarchism’s history and future

Reivew of Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution: The Definitive Edition (London: Pluto Press, 2021). 224pp., £85.00 hb., £19.99 pb., 978 0 74534 580 2 hb., 978 0 74534 581 9 pb. Should the state be the source of freedom? Should it be a wellspring for the affirmation of humanism? The modern anarchist tradition has […]

The promise of a pantheist politics

Reivew of Saul Newman, Political Theology: A Critical Introduction
Saul Newman, Political Theology: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press 2019), 180pp., £15.99 pb., 978 1 50952 840 0 pb. In The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, first published in the midst of political turmoil in Weimar era Germany, Carl Schmitt attempted a theoretical amputation of liberal parliamentarianism from democracy by excavating the contradictory principles on […]

Noam Chomsky: Freedom and power

Interview noam chomsky Freedom and power Peter hallward I’d like to start by asking you about some of your basic philosophical principles, starting with your understanding of human freedom and creativity. In the modern European tradition I’m most familiar with, freedom is a dominant philosophical theme from Descartes through Rousseau to Kant. With Kant we […]

Anarchism and Private Property

ANARCHISM AND PRIVATI PROPERTY Derek Browne No more government of man by man, by means of the accumulation of powers; no more exploitation of man by man, by means of the accumulation of capital. Proudhon (1) The majority of anarchists have been dedicated opponents of capitalism, of those forms of society which arise on the […]

The Statist Conception of Politics

THE STADSI [On[EPTIOn OF POLITI[S Tanv Skillen philosophically sanctified. Moral and Political Philosophy are taught as separate fields: evidently the problems of the politician (the Statesman) are not the problems of the ordinary chap, save at such times when the ordinary chap goes to the po:ls or lobbies his M.P. (the Citizen) or marches to […]

Walter Benjamin and the Red Army Faction, Part 2

Critique of Violence: the deposing of the law Walter Benjamin and the Red Army Faction, Part 2 Irving wohlfarth Things fal apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. W.B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’The ‘Critique of Violence’ (1921, hereafter abbreviated to ‘Critique’) is the only published statement of Benjamin’s on politics and […]

Faint signal: The student occupations in California and the Communiqué from an Absent Future

News Faint signal The student occupations in California and the Communiqué from an Absent FutureFrom 24 September to 2 October 2009, students from the University of California, Santa Cruz occupied and blockaded the University’s graduate student commons: nominally in protest against the cuts in education spending in the UC system, more generally against the entire […]

Colin Ward, 1924–2010: The incremental anarchist

Obituary The incremental anarchist Colin Ward, 1924–2010 Colin Ward, who died on 11 February 2010, was the leading anarchist thinker and writer of postwar Britain. Ward’s anarchism was at once constructive, creative and immensely practical. It drew critical but sympathetic attention from many outside the anarchist movement, and arguably it still holds lessons for contemporary […]