Arising, as it does, out of a turn towards anabaptist theology by white American evangelicals, Christian Anarchism has often displayed hostility towards multiple belonging. This can be seen in the precise relationship that many of those engaged in it imagine between radical Christianity and the Anarchist traditions on which it draws. For example, in a...
“No Gods, No Masters” is the quintessential anarchist slogan. Rejecting hierarchy in all its forms, the idea that there is ontological subordination at the heart of reality seems irreconcilable with a politics of equality and freedom. For those of us who remain theists, the sovereignty of God can be a point of tension, tempting us...
“Wives submit to your husbands.” Growing up, this seemed to be one of the least understood statements in the bible, right after women being admonished to be silent in church and to wear head-coverings when praying, of course. Bringing up these verses in my relatively modern, evangelical mega-church always produced vague responses and confused expressions....
“For always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.”John Hay. On Picket Duty. The next meeting of the Anarchists’ Club will be held in Codman Hall, 176 Tremont Street, on Sunday, February 12, at half past two o’clock....
When speaking of Russian anarchism, most people probably think first of the two great Russians who made significant contributions to anarchist ideology: Bakunin and Kropotkin. But Paul Avrich’s book “The Russian Anarchists” (Princeton University Press) does not deal with them, except in passing. It deals with the Russian anarchist movement, and a lasting one did...
Syndicalism — what is it? Syndicalism is a trade union movement that differs from others in several ways. Syndicalism distances itself from party politics and parliamentarism. They prioritize trade unions and claim to want to improve the conditions of wage earners in the present through economic struggle but also in the long term to change...
Did you grow up with a Christian identity? What were formative childhood experiences related to faith? My family was functionally irreligious in my childhood. I’d visit Sunday schools from time to time, but it wasn’t until my early teens that I began to explore Christianity. A particular formative spiritual experience happened when I was 14...
We live in strange times. We would call them, once again, the times of monsters. The international bourgeoisie is joining forces against the interests of the lower classes in order to escape from the economic crisis that it has caused. After the pandemic, the big trusts of bosses in the West searched for a way...
A report submitted to the EU in September, as interpreted by Michael Roberts, casts considerable doubt on the standard right-libertarian party line regarding investment. The standard right-libertarian talking point is that labor is dependent on investment, that investment — in the form either of credit or equity — comes from previous capital accumulation, and that...
Both anarchism and religion have enjoyed renewed academic attention since the end of the twentieth century: religion has been an increasingly visible aspect of political life; and anarchist ideas have suffused recent social and political movements to a striking degree. Scholars have therefore increasingly turned their attention to both of these trends, seeking to illuminate...
In 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic interrupted everything about business as usual under capitalism, save the threat of Black revolt. Precincts burned, prison abolitionism soared in prominence, businesses were looted, mobilization reached international dimensions, and for weeks on end, despite violent repression from the state and non-state actors, the entire country was consumed by a red...
Anarchy means the negation of authority. But since authority claims to legitimize its existence based on the need to defend social institutions, such as the family, religion, and property, a host of mechanisms have emerged to ensure the exercise and sanction of this authority: the law, the judiciary, the army, the legislative and executive branches,...
I find fodder for op-eds in some of the strangest places. I came across this video (“Politics is NOT a zero-sum game,” by Shai Davidai) in a HIT posted on Amazon Mechanical Turk by Davidai — an academic study in which he gauged viewers’ reactions to it. (For those who don’t know, Mechanical Turk is...
In the unlikely event that anyone reading this is unfamiliar with him, Russell Brand is a one time more-or-less leftist who, like Naomi Wolf, has gone down the rabbit hole of batshittery (he endorses the “Great Reset” conspiracy, among other things). Rape accusations against Brand have provoked howls all over the nuttier right-wing websites and...
The right-wing talking point that Black poverty is the result, not of historic injustice, but of “Black culture” — and particularly the effect of Great Society welfare programs on Black culture — dates almost as far back as the Great Society itself. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among other things a major early figure of neoconservatism, in...