Author: AnarchistStudies.Blog

In response to Mustapha Mond’s ‘A Brief Question of Syndicalism’ (4th February 2021), Iain McKay highlights that Marx and Engels, far from being advocates of syndicalism, lacked a commitment to workers’ management. Rather than trying to use syndicalism to save Marxism from itself, McKay argues that it would be better for the socialist movement to learn from their anarchist ‘frienemies’ and escape the deadweight of Marx’s legacy.

On Saving Marxism From Itself (A Response to Mutapha Mond’s ‘A Brief Question of Syndicalism’)

While we may not be able to gather as usual this International Workers’ Day, we are marking May Day by bringing you this excerpt from An Anarchist’s Manifesto by Glenn Wallis. Here, he defines anarchism as a set of ideas, as a value system, and as a praxis, considering its resonance at the micro, meso, and macro levels.

A Simple Idea

In solidarity!

Based on a paper given at the Anarchist Studies Network panel at the 2021 PSA conference, Cristopher Morales argues that the spontaneous emergence of mutual aid organising in response to the COVID-19 crisis had proven to be a temporary exception to the statist/capitalist norm, and that as ‘normal’ daily life returns, these solidaristic social relationships have disappeared.

Mutual Aid in the COVID-19 Crisis – a Short-Lived Exception?

[Part of a series of articles reflecting on anarchist responses to the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, one year on].

In this article, Thomas Swann applies the lens of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) to assess the threats posed to effective mutual aid self-organisation, including issues around top-down control, complex communication infrastructures, and preconditions such as community identity and organising experience. Swann argues that cybernetics can help us to collectively learn from, and overcome, the challenges of mutual aid organising during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, and that we must do so to meet looming future crises.

Anarchism, Cybernetics and Mutual Aid – A Reflection One Year On

[Part of a series of articles reflecting on anarchist responses to the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, one year on].

Taking a reflexive anthropological view of the disruption caused by the Covid-19 crisis, Laney Lenox considers the transformative potential of slowing down in everyday life.

Everyday Anarchism – Temporal Impermanence and Liberation in Everyday Action

[Part of a series of articles reflecting on anarchist responses to the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, one year on].

This article considers the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic, and attendant power grabs by the police, on street mobilisations. Neil Middleton focuses on France and Greece to trace the dynamics of previous crises into this new phase of crisis. He highlights the state’s changing strategies and tactics in each context, and points to the new challenges this poses to decentralised protest tactics and autonomous movements.

Pandemic and Reaction – Developments in France and Greece

[Part of a series of articles reflecting on anarchist responses to the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, one year on].

On the anniversary of the announcement of the first Coronavirus lockdown in the UK, two activists involved with local mutual aid initiatives look back at the trajectory of autonomous self-help through the Covid-19 pandemic’s shifting dynamics. They provide grounded perspective on its successes and problems, and think ahead to the longer-term propsects for mutual aid groups.

Experiences of Mutual Aid Organising in Glasgow and Brighton

[Part of a series of articles reflecting on anarchist responses to the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, one year on].

Kronstadt as Revolutionary Utopia, 1921-2021 and Beyond

A transnational convergence to remember history’s repressed revolutionary hopes and explore the “living past” struggle of capitalist authoritarianism vs. human internationalism.

Conference Recordings now available here: https://kronstadt2021.wordpress.com/conference-recordings/

The UK government’s clusterfuckery has resulted in the fourth worst death toll in the world per head of population. Bojo has blood on his hands. But the Tories’ pandemic response has also been marked by its crony ‘chumocracy’, jealous suppression (and co-optation) of mutual aid initiatives, and repressive policing of protest movements. In the first article of a new series on anarchist responses to the Coronavirus pandemic, Jim Donaghey examines the character of the ‘Covid State’, one year on.

Callous Incompetence, Corrupt Cronyism, Jealous Repression: One Year On, What is the Covid State?

[Part of a series of articles reflecting on anarchist responses to the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown, one year on].

Marx rejected the ‘syndicalist path’ in his quarrels with Bakunin during the years of the First International. But, in this article, Mustapha Mond asks whether syndicalism might in fact represent the very essence of Marxian socialism, as a model of ‘the self-government of the commune’ and as a bulwark against despotic ‘red bureaucracy’.

A Brief Question of Syndicalism