Suggested Readings

Many anarchists seized the 2004 election as an opportunity for nationwide autonomous actions emphasizing opposition to the farce of representative democracy. Unlike any summit or local issue, the election happened everywhere at once, focusing public attention on a wide range of issues that could be addressed on a variety of fronts. A nationwide campaign on the theme “Don’t (Just) Vote, Get Active” urged people to take action on election day to demonstrate all the possibilities for political engagement beyond the voting booth.

Naomi Klein chronicles a violent, global ‘revolt of the elites’ in her latest book The Shock Doctrine. In this interview with Left Turn editor Pranjal Tiwari, she explains how neoliberalism represents the counter-revolution of capital and thrives on disasters, wars, and crises to spread throughout the world.

In July 2005 the U.S. Army initiated a $20 million counterinsurgency program called the Human Terrain System (HTS). The program consists of five-person “human terrain teams” featuring anthropologists and other social scientists embedded with combat brigades. One team was deployed to Afghanistan in February 2007 and five more to Iraq in summer 2007. Some of the social scientists wear combat fatigues and carry weapons.

On 17 September, Enric Duran, an anticapitalist living in Barcelona, went into hiding. He had just admitted to essentially robbing 492,000 euros from 39 different banks, and then published this admission in a free newspaper that was distributed in the quantity of 200,000 copies that very morning.

In this article, the writing collective ‘Team Colors’ speaks about the organizing leading up to both conventions and takes a sober look at the anticapitalist movement and what they see as the divide betwen summit protests and movement building.

“The world as it is, is not the world as it has to be.” Long our basic aspiration, this ideal now springs from a U.S. presidential contender. And yet the gap between the change that Barack Obama promises and the transformation that we know is crucial may offer a space of possibility. For even as liberals are utilizing “hope” to captivate millions this election, embodied in Obama’s “New Politics,” I would maintain that those of us who seek a nonhierarchical world are still the real carriers of utopia. Nevertheless, this election supplies us the opening to reject statism in a way that’s sensitive to the historical moment and prefigurative of a directly democratic society—but only if we mind the gap.

Boyer takes a look at how the current financial crisis has come about and how this is affecting those off of Wall St. He examines the new economic model that being established by the Bailout, departing from traditional conservative neoliberal values. But contrary to the cries of free market advocates on the Right, this nationalization is far from socialism…

Last month, three NYPD officers who were on trial for killing Sean Bell and wounding his two friends in a hail of 50 bullets were acquitted amid mass outcry. This article chronicles a militant demonstration in the streets of Jamaica, Queens after the verdict was announced. The author Elliot Liu offers his personal perspective as a participant of the demonstration and how it stood apart from other protests surrounding the verdict.

Libertarian communism advocates the abolition of the state and capitalism in favor of a horizontal network of voluntary associations, workers’ councils and/or commons through which everyone will be free to satisfy their needs. In this article the Spanish anarchist Isaac Puente (later killed by Franco) goes into detail as to why such a model for society is necessary for freedom and equality to exist.

[continued from part one]

With the 2008 election around the corner, and with Obama ahead in the polls, many people who normally counsel “not getting your hopes up” are sounding hopeful and excited about the possibility that the Republicans might be kicked out of the White House. New voter registrations from youth, people of color, and low income folks are coming in by the millions. These new voters believe that this election means something, and that electing Obama will help make their lives better. These hopes include everything from saving us all from the economic crisis to bringing universal health care to ending the war in Iraq. At the very least, he seems to be a smarter bet than McCain.

On May Day 2008 representatives of the Iraqi labor movement issued a statement to the international community listing a series of demands relating to the US occupation, coinciding with the international day of recognition for working class struggle.

We are for the abolition of the gendarme. We are for the freedom of all and for free agreement, which will be there for all when no one has the means to force others, and all are involved in the good running of society. We are for anarchy.

After winning their respective nominations both Obama and McCain have moved markedly further to the right, both catering to the powerful interests that have the financial and political clout to get them into the office. This article breaks down who is shaping the candidates views on foreign and economic policy, who is paying to get them into office, and shows in what direction both candidates are leaning.

A dialogue between John Holloway and Vittorio Sergi concerning the outbreak of violence between the black bloc and police in Rostock during the G8 protests in Germany.

The resurrection and imminent dispatch of the United States Fourth Fleet to patrol the coasts of Latin America invokes the bad old days of Monroe Doctrine impositions and gunboat diplomacy for many citizens of those southern latitudes. In this article John Ross examines renewed and increased U.S. militarism in Latin America as an effort to regain hegemony and maintain its grip on the region’s economy.

Bakunin’s “Revolutionary Catechism” was one of the founding organizational documents of anarchist political philosophy when it was published originally in 1866. Today much of what is laid out within it can be useful in developing our own vision of a future society and incorporating the values represented within it in our political organizing. This political theory and vision will hopefully inspire this generation of organizers much as it did those who were first exposed to it decades and decades ago. This was taken from Sam Dolgoff’s Bakunin on Anarchism, an edited collection of Bakunin’s writings.

“A storm swept the world in 1968. It arose in Vietnam, and then blew across Asia, crossing the sea and the mountains to Europe and beyond. The signs and portents had been there for some years, but the speed with which it spread was not foreseen.” This is how Ali begins Storming Heaven, a personal account of the uprisings of 1968, arguably one of the most dynamic, inspiring, and tragic years of the 20th Century. Here we get a wide overview of the many battles that were fought—from the streets of Paris to the jungles of Vietnam—through the lens of Ali’s personal experiences during these insurrections.

The military strategy of the Israeli Defense Forces has been heavily influenced by contemporary philosophy, critical theory, and modern architectural theory. Contemporary military theorists are now busy re-conceptualizing the urban domain. At stake are the underlying concepts, assumptions and principles that determine military strategies and tactics. But also at stake are of course the real-life consequences of any military campaign—human lives. In this article Weizman explores the “military-architectural ‘shadow world’” currently being created by the IDF as a counter-insurgency strategy in the occupied Palestinian territories and soon to be exported worldwide.

Here we highlight an entirely unexpected source of optimism for life beyond capitalism: insights from the most radical shift in science in the late 20th century, the emergence of complexity theory. Complexity theory and, more broadly, a non-linear view of the world, may offer some potentially profound insights, particularly for those of us wondering where to put our energies to create a different social system.

In this article, Elliot Liu examines the relationship between above-ground organizations and underground guerilla groups in the major social-upheavals of the 1960s/70s and contemplates how these forces could play themselves out in a contemporary context.

An acute food crisis has struck the world in 2008. This is on top of a longer-term crisis of agriculture and food that has already left billions hungry and malnourished. In order to understand the full, dire implications of what is happening today it is necessary to look at the interaction between these short-term and long-term crises. Both crises arise primarily from the for-profit production of food, fiber, and now biofuels, and the rift between food and people that this inevitably generates.

Direct action — that is, any kind of action that bypasses established political channels to accomplish objectives directly—has a long and rich heritage in North America, extending back to the Boston Tea Party and beyond. Despite this, there are many misunderstandings about it, in part due to the ways it has been misrepresented in the corporate media.

Morea talks of the 1960s Black Mask and Up Against The Wall Motherfucker! groups and their activities – such as busting into the Pentagon during an anti-war protest, and “assassinating” a famous poet. He also discusses friendships with various characters, including the late Valerie Solanas – who shot Andy Warhol and wrote the SCUM Manifesto.

There have been many speculations about what the conventions will look like this summer. Some of those predictions have come from the mainstream media, others from conservative talk radio, and of course there is the buzz that goes on between people. Recently, CrimethInc. weighed in with the piece What to Expect From the Conventions. Much of the information in that article is incomplete and incorrect and does not convey the actions Unconventional Denver has been organizing against the DNC. We would like to use this as an opportunity to let people know what is really happening this summer in Denver.

Now that summer is rolling around, we felt it was time to take a closer look at the upcoming DNC and RNC mobilizations. In this article, CrimethInc. presents a strategic discussion on the significance of mobilizing against summits and offers insight into the proposed strategy put forth by the RNC welcoming committee and its potential for movement building.

Now that Barack Obama is the official democratic nominee for the 2008 presidential election, and his popularity among the left in the United States is swelling, it seems to be a critical time to take a closer look at the details of his policies. In this article written by Anthony Arnove, Obama’s claim to be an anti-war candidate is deconstructed and is shown to be a demobilizing force to the larger anti-war movement.