What is anti-capitalism? What distinguishes anarchist anti-capitalism from other “competing” social-political projects? Whatever answers are forthcoming to such questions, at the heart of any anti-capitalism is an “alternative economy”. What this in turn amounts to has been a matter of debate and struggle. We share below a reflection, published in the Seville based newspaper El Topo, on anarchism as an anti-capitalism that endeavours to surpass economics as such.
What is art and what relation there is between it and revolutionary politics, anarchism, is a uniquely modern question born of the alienating social divisions of capitalism. To address the matter fully would require a reflection well beyond our present intentions. Instead, we share what amounts to an introductory reflection authored by Tatiana Mikhaila, entitled “Dedans Nous, le Déluge: The Flood Within Towards an Aesthetics of Risk” (24/01/2017) and published on the CrimethInc collective’s website; a first contribution to a new concern with art and politics on the website.
With the expansion of neo-fascist and neo-nazi groups in the shadows of ever more racist, xenophobic and sexist “traditional” conservative right-wing political parties, confusion over the significance of the liberal freedom of speech can paralyse radical political criticism and action. We share below a timely analysis from CrimethInc on the limits of free dialogue when politics must be conceived of as war, as a conflict between ways of life.
Better to live in the provisional than in the definitive.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
All dissidence, rebellion, revolution has a location, a place. The relationship between the two has been the subject of an ongoing reflection on the politics of space and architecture, here, as elsewhere. The essay that follows, preceded by an abstract in the form of aseries of theses, is authored by a friend of Autonomies, Carlos Jacques, and was originally presented at the III International Conference on Gender and Architecture “MORE: Expanding architecture from a gender-based perspective”, which took place at the School of arcitecture of the University of Florence, Italy, on the 26-28th of January 2017.
From roarmag (23/01/2016), and in the wake of the anti-Trump and anti-fascist protests on January 20th, we share a reflection on anti-fascism by Mark Bray (for other parallel reflections, click here) …
Jaime Aleko, as video journalist working with such media collectives as Periodismo Humano, has covered and denounced the ravages of contemporary capitalism and recorded the many resilient and courageous forms of resistance to it, with a visual language, can one dare say it, of silent, poetic eloquence.
Without narration, some of his most recent work captures the moments and spaces of of refugee communities in eastern europe. In solidarity, we modestly share some of this work below …
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
“[A]ll public assembly is haunted by the police and the prison.” The words are Judith Butler’s, words through which she invites us to think anew the relationship between vulnerability and resistance.
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On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the united states, and in solidarity, we share the calls for protest …
In the past, we have shared, in the english language, news and reflections on the Vio.Me factory occupation-coorperative, in Thessaloniki. If the occupation remains legally precarious, Vio.Me now stands as an example in europe not only of workers’ self-management, but of the needed connections that can and must exist between a self-managed factory and the broader society of which it is a part, for the former to contribute to develop non-capitalist forms of social organisation and mutual aid.
We share below a report from Vio.Me by Liam-Barrington Bush, entitled “The solidarity ecosystems of occupied factories” and originally published with roarmag (16/01/2016), followed by a short video documentary on the occupation.
Anarchist myths
We share below a reflection by Ruymán Rodríguez of the Federación de Anarquistas Gran Canaria on the limits of an anarchism exclusively thought in terms of anti-statism and anti-capitalism.
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