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I'm a Social Anarchist and an avid reader of comics. Twitter handle is @armyofcrime.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Essential Anarchist Texts




Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice
by Rudolf Rocker

Not a very contemporary theory, the move from industrialism to customer service economy largely took the bite out of it, I think. Noam Chomsky claims to be an Anarcho-Syndicalist, although the anarchist writer he references most is Bakunin.

Anyway, AS is a fairly economically simplistic system, sort of a half brother of Anarcho-Communism, stating that the workers should seize control of the means of productions by expropriation. By controlling the means of production, profits would be proportional to the amount of wealth created by the firm, as opposed to the wage, the smallest amount anyone is willing to accept for the equivalent amount of work. Rocker specifically deals with Industrial and Agricultural work, and the IWW was probably the largest organization with explicitly syndicalist sympathies in the history of the USA.

Unlike a gift economy, currency would still be used. Rocker never seems to get into explicit detail how this would affect other non employment aspects of our lives. Still, to be a well rounded bomb-thrower I think everyone should give it a read.

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