mambabasa

True libertarianism, a left wing, socialist libertarianism, is a path towards a post-moral, totally human and liberated future. This is because libertarianism rejects the idea that morality should be imposed upon individuals by external forces. Instead, individuals are free to create their own meaning and purpose in life, without being constrained by societal norms or religious dogma. This freedom allows individuals to fully realize their own potential and to live their lives on their own terms. Libertarianism is often misunderstood as a conservative, capitalist philosophy. With this book, I aim to recapture the term from the hands of greedy destroyers of the world, and contribute a little to the ever-growing intellectual tradition on the left.

Having acknowledged the intimate bonds and episodic convergence of abolition and communism, it behoves us to inquire into what might be learned from their points of dissension. Are there ways in which abolitionism and communism might still operate, to cite Du Bois, as ‘separating ideologies’? I think the most fruitful approach, in view of an eventual ‘drawing together’, is to contend in tandem with abolitionist critiques of communism and communist critiques of abolition. My wager, to paraphrase an old philosopher from the Baltics, is that communism without abolition is empty, abolition without communism blind.

To destroy “woman” does not mean that we aim, short of physical destruction, to destroy lesbianism simultaneously with the categories of sex, because lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we have previously called servitude, a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation (“forced residence,” domestic corvée, conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.), a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or to stay heterosexual. We are escapees from our class in the same way as the American runaway slaves were when escaping slavery and becoming free. For us this is an absolute necessity; our survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women. This can be accomplished only by the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system which is based on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of the difference between the sexes to justify this oppression.

ABSTRACT Anarchism is a philosophy opposed to hierarchy and authority, and is used as a critical lens to analyze the whole of human society. As with members of all social groupings, anarchists differ from each other in many ways, one of which is their political ideology. At least two visibly distinct ideological variants of anarchism are distinguishable in the US—a red anarchism that emphasizes economic concerns and a green anarchism that focuses upon the environment. American anarchists have long assumed, based upon anecdotal evidence, that there are differences in ideological variant identification between those on the two US coasts. Using survey data, two distinct measures of ideology were formed and respondents were classified into four separate US regions. Although the majority of anarchists do not specify a particular orientation, Northeasterners were associated with red anarchism, while Westerners were associated with green anarchism. These differences may be created and/or reinforced by structural or organizational factors.

These two sometimes contradictory anti-authoritarian perspectives were hastily translated 50 years after the 17th of November of 1973, the date marking the peak of an insurrection which marked the passage from dictatorship to bourgeois democracy in greece. The first is an article published by an antifascist collective, which discusses, in the trademark style of local autonomists, contemporary — despite the 15 years that have passed since its publication — questions on the meaning and background of the uprising and the position that radicals should have towards its commemoration. The 2007 article ends with a brief chronology of the uprising, a useful segue into the second text, a discussion on the role of “the anarchists”, an informal grouping of anti-authoritarian participants in the workers’ assembly within the Polytechnic occupation. The text is a relatively brief reference within a 1977 article on the development of the greek proletariat in one of many early anti-authoritarian print publications which emerged in the post-dictatorship era, and the originally unnamed author (who has posthumously been identified as X. Konstatinides) identifies himself as one of the participants within this anarchist grouping. Besides a detailed recollection of some seemingly small, but crucial moments within the occupation, there is also value in the inclusion of the reactions of the ‘traditional’ left to the uprising. At the time of writing, there have been large demonstrations and some, fairly limited — for the standards of this particular insurgent holiday — commemorative clashes in Athens, Patras, Thessaloniki and Ioannina. There are still lively debates within the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space on how — and if — uprisings such as the ones marked by the 17th of November of 1973, and the 6th of December of 2008, should be commemorated (see the extended 2022 analysis by anarchist prisoner D. Xatzivasiliadis: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1621702/; if I have a lot more time on the 17th of November next year, I might tackle it…). Please excuse any translation mistakes!

Material solidarity means to raise the social cost of Zionism on the home Imperialist front. By reinscribing radical Anti-imperialist history into our theory and practice we can generate a militant strategy in coordination with the movements of the Palestinian national liberation forces on the ground, as they continue to wage war on Zionist colonialism. ‘Bringing the war home’ in essence, calls on us to abolish counterinsurgency from our movements in favour of aligning ideologically and practically with the AlQassam armed fighter and the Fellaheen rock thrower.

Free Palestine!

The question of our time, then, is not how we should respond to the climate crisis, or the coronavirus crisis, or the current economic crisis. The real question is twofold: firstly, how can we take hold of the revolutionary potential of this moment to attack the root cause of each of these crises – capitalism, and all its oppressive and destructive effects; and secondly, how can we build in its place a system that will truly value and secure the freedom of every individual, community, and society around the world.

My love, these experiences together are as seamless as every wave in an ocean. To others this is just a tale of two mercury switch hearts ignited by the spark of a first kiss. I look forward to whatever we may encounter under this black rainbow called life. We'll ride the waves of every hurricane that makes landfall. Until their bullets turn our blood into confetti during a shoot-out, or we simply grow old and sing each other to sleep with a shared death rattle... More riots! Vandalism! Anarchy!

In May of 2023, we hosted “Practicing for an Abolitionist World,” a virtual gathering for transformative justice, restorative justice, and community accountability practitioners from around the world, with the belief that community-based responses to harm know no borders and have always been global. In this new report, Transformative Justice Knows No Borders, we share learnings from that convening, including case studies from Kurdistan, India, the Philippines, and Argentina.

This report looks at the different languages and lineages people draw on in each of these places to root transformative justice practices in their local soil. Under each of their responses to interpersonal violence lies a vast network of care infrastructures that enable such responses — solidarity economies, self-governance systems, and new relationships to law and to each other. Built by movements, these are like the root systems and mycelial networks of fungi under the soil that enable plants and trees aboveground to thrive.

The genocide in Palestine, along with war, violence, repression, and rising authoritarianism around the world, have drawn our attention yet again to the interdependence of state violence at home and globally. This calls on us to weave transnational networks of resistance. We hope that this new resource can help you connect your organizing to a larger mycelial network that spans borders and states as part of the “Transformative Justice Transnational,” and that you find it useful as we collectively continue to weave transnational networks of care, healing, and justice.

When anarchism (or any other idea for that matter) is brought into new contexts, it necessarily enters into dialogue with the histories and traditions of that new context. When Mao Zedong Thought was all the rage during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., this new idea was re-contextualized in the context of the history of revolutionary nationalism of the Katipunan, Andres Bonifacio, and the resistance to the American colonial State. Anarchism in the Philippines necessarily indigenizes itself into the Philippine context, something I’ve written about in the past on various libertarian elements in the Philippines.[1] My purpose here isn’t to restate what I’ve already written on previously but to expand the re-contextualization of the potentiality of anarchism in rebel peripheries to a distinctly anti-anarchist project: that of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). As a Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad says “Seek knowledge even in China,” China being the furthest and most remote place in the ancient Arab imagination, urging that we ought to seek knowledge even from the most remote—or in this case, the strangest—of places.

The CPP, its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), and its front the National Democratic Front (NDF) have been waging Maoist armed struggle in the Philippines since 1969. In doing so, it has created a number of rebel peripheries in the countryside that exist outside the control of the Philippine State—in the anarchy of the peripheries. However, the longstanding second communist rebellion in the Philippines has to be placed in the historical context of anarchic and rebel peripheries in the archipelago. Once we move past and sublate the experiences of the Maoists for the revolutionary project of anarchism, we can then move on understanding the insurrectionary project of mamundok-in-place.

What binds these cases is not simply the betrayal of early ideals but the structure of the revolutionary movements themselves: the dominance of military actors, the centralisation of decision-making and the erasure of grassroots democratic input. Liberation became a state project, not a people’s movement. The result was not freedom but domination by a different set of elites.

What binds these cases is not simply the betrayal of early ideals but the structure of the revolutionary movements themselves: the dominance of military actors, the centralisation of decision-making and the erasure of grassroots democratic input. Liberation became a state project, not a people’s movement. The result was not freedom but domination by a different set of elites.