Featured articles

E. Armand, “A vous, les humbles” / “To you, the humble ones” (1917) (FR/EN)

O humble ones, we know your jealousies and your grudges. We know that in your morals, you ape the social exalted, when you do not surpass them in ridicule or narrowness. We are fully aware of your prejudices, your fear of what others will say, your servility, your flattening before anyone who exercises authority, wears fine clothes or clinks a purse full of coins. […]

Bakunin Library

Mikhail Bakunin, “Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man” (1870)

Bakunin’s great unfinished work, The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution, covers a lot of ground, but one of its more interesting sections, the “Appendix” called “Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man,” is concerned with questions that will be familiar to readers of its best-known fragment, “God and the State.” It is again a question of Bakunin’s elaboration and defense of materialism, with sections on “The System of the World” and “Religion.” Much of the focus is on the nature and proper subject matter of science. Part of the account takes the form of a critique of positivist philosophy, as pursued by the followers of Auguste Comte.  […]

Featured articles

“Rational Socialists” vs. the Anarchists

In 2010, I posted a partial translation of Summary of Social Economy, According to the Ideas of Colins, by Agathon de Potter, one of the most active of Colins’ followers. It took fifteen years to come back and finish the job, but — one thing having led to another — the completed translation is one of three newly translated texts by de Potter that I’m sharing today.  […]

Anarchy 101

Anarchy 101: Notes on Force and Authority

Some of the most basic concepts in anarchist theory can prove terribly slippery when we try to apply them — sometimes even when we apply them with great care. Authority is arguably the most difficult of these notions to tame, which obviously poses problems for us, given the central place of anti-authoritarian critique in anarchist analyses. So, in response to some questions that have emerged since the first post on authority and hierarchy, I want to spend just a little more time exploring the concept in the context of anarchist theory. […]

Featured articles

E. E. Fribourg, “The International Workingman’s Association” (1871)

The history of the International Workingman’s Association is obviously contested territory, with Marxist and anarchist accounts competing for attention with works, like Timothy Messer-Kruse’s very interesting account of The Yankee International, which emphasize other factions and other dynamics within the International. Of the existing histories, I am probably most partial to Robert Graham’s We Do Not Fear Anarchy, We Invoke It: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement, which strikes me as a balanced account. But I’ll admit a fascination with a number of clearly partisan accounts that manage to cover comparatively unfamiliar ground. […]

Featured articles

Guy Antoine and Ch.-Aug. Bontemps, “What is Situationism?” (1966)

Nine years ago, a movement was born, similar in many respects to the libertarian movement and very distant in others. Why isn’t it being discussed? It seems to be linked, on the one hand, to the highly developed theoretical aspect of the Situationist International’s texts and, on the other, to Situationist concerns, which seem to interest only a small minority. What are the causes? Among them, one of the most important is undoubtedly that professional revolutionaries from Lenin to Bakunin always separated political-economic action from action in culture. In their view, it was first necessary to change the material basis of life and only address the rest (the problem of art and lifestyle) in a second phase, without realizing that they were thus leaving “culture” in the hands of the bourgeoisie. […]