Is there a future for Anarchism in America?

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Julius Gavroche

From Freedom News (17/08/25)

The co-producer of the landmark documentary film reflects on its legacy amid today’s challenges

Joel Sucher

Anarchism in America is the title of a documentary produced way back in 1980; a time when the world was a far different place and the embers of the older strains of the movement?—communist, individualist and syndicalist?—were still alight. I was one of the producers of that documentary and was lucky enough to rub elbows with a variety of anarchists?—Italians, Jews, Spaniards, Russians among others?—who shared a common vision of a better world. They dreamed of a universal terrain without the shackles of authoritarian structures, governments and their corporate lackeys; churches, with their superstitions, and armed police to enforce the dictates of oligarchs and authoritarians.

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Uri Gordon: Anarchism and Nationalism

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Julius Gavroche

Continuing from our previous post: “A meeting between Ubu kings“.

Anarchism and Nationalism: On the Subsidiarity of Deconstruction

Uri Gordon

Anarchists are against nationalism; everyone knows that. Instead of solidarity across borders and anti-hierarchical antagonism within them, nationalism engenders loyalty to the state with its armed forces and public symbols, encourages the oppressed to identify with their compatriot oppressors, scapegoats minorities, and pits workers of different countries against one another in economic competition or open warfare. Opposition to nationalism is an almost trivial starting point for anarchist politics, reflected in antimilitarist actions, antifascism, and migrant solidarity to name a few. Besides, if anarchism “stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals” (Goldman 1911a/2014: 41), then anarchists can only reject the proposition that individuals owe their loyalty to a pre-existing collective of millions of strangers into which they never chose to be born. Anarchists work towards a society that would see the end of nations and nationalism, along with social classes and all forms of domination.

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A meeting between Ubu kings

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Julius Gavroche

we seek beyond history
for a new and more possible meeting.

Audre Lorde

The image of two men aspiring to absolute national power and imperial expansion meeting to discuss the parcelling out of a country invaded by one of them, with the words “Pursuing Peace” written on the wall behind, induces all manner of reactions, none of which are pleasant.

If we could only laugh at the ubuesque buffoonery of these two, the horror would be easier to bear and we could perhaps, with Alfred Jarry, show our “contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one’s life a poem of incoherence and absurdity”. Yet the violence of their deeds is too great and the number of their sycophants too many, for them to be simply laughed off stage. And their pleased demeanour augurs ill.

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Counter-Utility: Ideas for avoiding the trap of useful things

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Julius Gavroche

A reflection on the necessary uselessness of radical thought-practice, published with Lobo suelto! (11/08/2025)

Produce or die is the motto of the West.

Pierre Clastres

They want to force us to govern, but we will not fall for that provocation.

The Invisible Committee

We may be of this world, but we are certainly not for it.

Andrew Culp

The social sciences and humanities have long been under attack for their ‘uselessness’. The social pact with the Masters of the World — on which their scientific legitimacy rested — has been broken, but this is nothing new. The rupture has manifested itself in many ways over the last few decades, and today it is particularly visible in the global reduction of public policies aimed at funding them. In Milei‘s Argentina, the scenario is moving towards a progressive and radical dismantling. Although this phenomenon could be interpreted as an obvious —and increasingly marked— anti-scientific stance in the world, that is, as a regression of human thought itself, it actually reveals something deeper. More than a decade ago, Fabián Ludueña Romandini already warned us about this: the brutal intensification of the cosmological conditions of the model of exploitation and accumulation in which we live, which demands, among other things, the abandonment of the concessions that at one time allowed the emergence of critical thinking within state science.

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New Fascisms and the Reconfiguration of the Global Counterrevolution

Posted on August 14, 2025 by Julius Gavroche

From Ill Will (11/08/2025) and Colapso y desvio (07/04/2025), by Nueva Icaria.

The present essay, written by friends in Chile, argues that the new fascisms of our day are not only generated by crises of capital, but must be understood as dynamically evolving reactions to its shifting needs. Drawing upon a wide range of influences from Bordiga, Marcuse, and Mattick to contemporary writers such as Lazzarato, Bifo, Toscano, and Endnotes, the authors trace the evolution of the “fascist solution” to capitalist crisis from its roots in the 20th century to today, emphasizing its tendency toward mutation, evolution, and adaptation. Among their important conclusions is that what sets the “new fascisms” apart from those of the past is not their emergence within the framework of democracy, which was already true of their 20th century predecessors. Rather, the difference lies in how contemporary liberal states “were able to perfect fascist policies and allow them to be deployed even within a democratic framework, to the point that they have been able to build an industry around crime and insecurity as justifications for the establishment of these policies.” In this respect, it is all the more striking that criticism of the fascistic tendencies of the Trump administration has not been accompanied by a thoroughgoing critique of democracy; instead, the progressive left has persisted in its wrongheaded belief in the total opposition between democracy and fascism. In the final analysis, the authors argue, this recognition of the reliance of latent fascisms upon preexisting democratic legal frameworks serves as a necessary precondition for thinking through the requirements of any possible communist revolution today, understood here as the practical abolition of capitalist social relations through the production of immediate measures that suppress its rigidly imposed social separations and fragmentation.

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Franco “Bifo” Berardi: “Humanity will not survive this century”

Posted on August 13, 2025 by Julius Gavroche

We share an interview with Franco “Bifo” Berardi, conducted by Pedro Rios for the Portuguese newspaper, Público (01/08/2025).

And as a complement to this interview, we also share below a video recording of an interview with “Bifo” for Zer0 Books and Repeater Media, from 2024.

Known as “Bifo” since his youth, the Italian Franco Berardi has been a reference of leftwing thought over the last decades. In May of 1968, he participated in the student revolt of the University of Bologna. He would be part of the extra-parliamentary group Potere Operaio, next to figures such as “Toni” Negri. During those years of rebellious agitation, he founded the magazine A/traverse and he was involved in the pirate radio station, Alice. In his books, Berardi leaves the stalls of more orthodox Marxism, calling on, for example, the teachings and concepts of psychoanalysis for his criticism of post-industrial capitalist society.

His last book, Disertate (2023), identifies in the “wave” of depression among the young a symptom of a world of excessive work and in a climate crisis. In the face of the chaos and the pain, the response of these young people is “desertion”, a withdrawal, a giving up, as if joy could only be found amidst “ruins”, according to “Bifo”.

Yes, Franco Berardi, today 75 years old, has lost hope. We wanted to speak to him with the pretext of the recent Portuguese edition of Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility (2017). In that book …, the philosopher had already made a sombre diagnosis of life informed by capitalism, but he still believed that it would be possible to open a path of flight. How? “By creating a common consciousness and a common technical platform for the world’s cognitive workers.” It was the intellectual workers (artists, engineers, scientists) who set up the machine; it was now up to them “to re-programme” the great world machine for collective wellbeing.

Almost ten years after writing these words, Franco Berardi’s hope faded away.

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Zoe Baker: Anarchism as a Way of Life

Posted on August 8, 2025 by Julius Gavroche
Portrait of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65) 1865 by Gustave Courbet (1819-77)

In 1925 the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta wrote that,

Anarchy is a form of living together in society; a society in which people live as brothers and sisters without being able to oppress or exploit others and in which everyone has at their disposal whatever means the civilisation of the time can supply in order for them to attain the greatest possible moral and material development. And Anarchism is the method of reaching anarchy, through freedom, without government – that is, without those authoritarian institutions that impose their will on others by force … (Malatesta 1995, 52).

In this passage Malatesta distinguishes between anarchy as a goal and anarchism as a method of achieving this goal. One of the interesting features of Malatesta’s theory is that he views anarchy itself as both a goal and an on-going process. He refers to anarchy as a “form of living together in society” which has to be continuously produced and reproduced over time, rather than a static unchanging utopia. This idea can be clearly seen in Malatesta’s earlier writings. In 1891 he wrote that,

By the free association of all, a social organisation would arise through the spontaneous grouping of men according to their needs and sympathies, from the low to the high, from the simple to the complex, starting from the more immediate to arrive at the more distant and general interests. This organisation would have for its aim the greatest good and fullest liberty to all; it would embrace all humanity in one common brotherhood, and would be modified and improved as circumstances were modified and changed, according to the teachings of experience. This society of free men, this society of friends would be Anarchy (Malatesta 2014, 128).

Since anarchy is a society which will be continuously modified and improved over time it follows that “Anarchy” is “above all, a method”. This method is, according to Malatesta, “the free initiative of all”, “free agreement” and “free association” (Malatesta 2014, 141–42). These two claims come together in the view that,

Anarchy, in common with socialism, has as its basis, its point of departure, its essential environment, equality of conditions; its beacon is solidarity and freedom is its method. It is not perfection, it is not the absolute ideal which like the horizon recedes as fast as we approach it; but it is the way open to all progress and improvements for the benefit of everybody (Quoted in Turcato 2012, 56. For a different translation see Malatesta 2014, 143).

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Shawn P. Wilbur: An exercise in theoretical synthesis-distillation of anarchist thought and practice

Posted on August 2, 2025 by Julius Gavroche
Portrait of P.J. Proudhon, 1865 by Gustave Courbet

This is the first opportunity that we have had, as a collective, to celebrate and acknowledge the very impressive work by Shawn P. Wilbur of translating, publishing (into English) and reflecting upon – with others – “classical” anarchist theory and practice.

In particular, his ongoing translation of the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is a contribution of note to making this author’s ideas more accessible to anglophone readers.

His website – if we may be permitted to say “his” -, The Libertarian Labyrinth, is a virtual treasure trove of anarchist literature. And below, from this trove, we share a recent summary of Shawn P. Wilbur’s efforts to synthesise and distil a picture of anarchist theory, largely inspired by the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, along with a collection of quotations from the later’s work that helps us to understand the path that Wilbur has taken.

We can only wish that he may be able to continue this passionate exercise.

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Horacio González: Half a scarf or an unfinished song

Posted on July 31, 2025 by Julius Gavroche

There is no need to ask what remains of the revolution. Nothing remains of the revolution, because the revolution is always what remains. Remnant, excess, surplus: the revolution is not what first exists and then leaves a halo that its children will try to assume, channel or take up again. The revolution is precisely that something that remains and exists only because it is the halo, the illuminated outline whose only real existence lies in being fleeting. It is a fleeting coin, which someone holds in their hands, as the repository of an awkward residue.

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Giorgio Agamben: On identity

Posted on July 31, 2025 by Julius Gavroche
René Magritte. La Reproduction interdite/Not to Be Reproduced), 1937

Kojève once expressed a warning in the form of a critique of identity that is worth reflecting on: “Be what you can never become”. The mistake of those who seek identity is to want to become what they already are. What we simply are is not an identity, it is an ever-ongoing experience that continually slips through our fingers and therefore we can never become. And yet the society in which we live does nothing but attribute an identity to us, which, with varying degrees of conviction, we end up assuming. This identity – as we know perfectly well – is necessarily false, and those who truly want to become what they are risk – as happened to Nietzsche and, albeit to a lesser extent, to almost everyone else – falling into madness. Wise, that is, without identity, is he who is always without ever becoming: but this is precisely what today’s so-called civilised societies consider foreign and reject to the margins, when they do not simply seek to eliminate it.

Source: Quodlibet.it, 24/07/2025

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