Tag: anarchist

Dear Anarchist Federation Readers…

It’s come to my attention that my website has been added, for some time, to an automated aggregator site without my knowledge or permission. While I’m fairly indifferent overall – that something I’ve written is shared and seen online is great, and as far as I can tell they aren’t profiting off of my content – I do have one concern. That is, where the hell is the traffic to my website? Where are the people reading the content who go gee, wish I could see more of that and sign up via email for updates on more and read it from the source.

Welcome to the call out advertisement post!

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A Left Critique of the Voice – And Why I’ll Vote Yes

Somewhat shockingly, the anarchist has some concerns about the state and the implementation of the First Nations’ Voice to Parliament, something that has been a long-time coming since Turnbull rejected the Uluru Statement in 2017. Just as shockingly, the world is not an ideal place for idealism, so pragmatism must take some precedence in the short-term. But I still thought it worth discussing briefly how the Voice, in its current form, is flawed and limited from an anarchic perspective, followed by a fall to reality that stresses the urgency of ensuring its passing later this year.

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My 2022 Reading List – Part 2

This is part 2 of my 2022 reading list – part 1 can be found here. It is here the focus of my reading (for the most part) was on Australian foreign policy and Indigenous politics as they were some of the units I took at university in first semester. Again, it is in the order that I finished reading them, so there are some odd jumps as I read multiple books at once.

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My 2022 Reading List – Part 1

It’s that time of year again where I make note of how little I have written, but at least I’ve made up for it by reading more. Particularly, reading books on topics to ensure that what I did write (mostly university essays) was as polished as possible – and given my grades, for the most part, were good this year, it paid off. So like previous years (linked below), here is the first part of my 2022 reading list. As usual, it is in the order that I completed reading them – so enjoy the jumps between topics.

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Conservatism As a Disposition and a Conservative Anarchism

28/01/2022

There is much debate about whether conservatism is a fully fledged ideology or merely disposition, a way of looking at the world that looks to the past to inform the present and carefully guide the future. This is the argument, always presented as a question in textbooks or other material on conservatism but is never answered, and it is adopted by conservatives themselves to justify or explain their positions on political, cultural and social arenas. I think there is merit to the disposition argument, but more often than not it is used as a shield against genuine criticism.

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Authoritarian Socialism and the Anarchist Alternative

This is the second of two essays I submitted for university this week. For this one the question prompt I chose was “Does socialism always tend towards authoritarianism?” Short answer was no, but I had to write about 1799 more words so this is the long answer talking about the State, Russia, Spain, and anarchism and a bit of democratic confederalism. Title is iffy and unimaginative because screw putting effort into that. All references are down the bottom. Enjoy

Socialism is a school of thought most simply defined by its opposition to capitalism (Heywood 2021: 75). This is, however, an extremely broad range of ideas and there has been much conflict within and between nations, parties and movements about what, and who, constitutes true socialist ideals. Perhaps the greatest of these is the antagonism between democratic and authoritarian visions of socialism. The Twentieth Century saw the rise of authoritarian socialism, manifested primarily through the Russian Revolution in October 1917 and the horrors of the Stalinist regime, and in China under Mao’s Communist Party.

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Some Notes on the American Coup Attempt

07/01/2021

2021 off to a great start, eh? Julian Assange not being extradited, but not for the precedent setting reasons, and denied bail. Now the US is yet again in turmoil, probably the closest to a genuine threat to their government and “democracy” since the Civil War, with a rather incompetent and short-lived coup attempt. Both events occurred at times inconvenient for an Australian political addict. Here are some very quick thoughts on the events in America today, in no real order:

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My 2020 Reading List

30/12/2020

As this rather wretched and exhausting year comes to a close, I looked back at my list from 2019 and laughed sadly at my optimistic plans to read more in 2020. Perhaps I did when you count news, analysis, etc. online, but in terms of books it was disastrously minimal. However, the books I did read offered brilliant insights or just fascinating bits of knowledge. So, in no real order:

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Why I’d Vote for Biden

An anarchist, voting? Oh no, that’s not allowed, that… that’s the other kind of anarchy! Let alone for Biden! Well, let it be some consolation that I cannot vote in the US election because I have the fortune of being born elsewhere in the world and vote there instead. But I do not view the act of voting in a capitalist electoral system as entirely contradictory to the anarchist belief of abolishing authority, even that of the State itself. Let me explain, because this is a piece for the “left”.

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