[lbo-talk] more on Graeber

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Wed May 11 14:08:24 PDT 2005


There is also this journal, which I had not heard of:

http://perspectives.anarchist-studies.org/

and this guide

http://www.spunk.org/spunk150/publications.html

Here is a list put together by a self-described political philosopher on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/23AX7BI1B58SS/103-7860209-6375020

George Woodcock also has an older histoty of anarchsim that I recall finding enlightening.

My tentative conclusion from this five minute survey is to reinforce my self that anarchism is less a theoretical tradition in the way Marxism has been than it has a loosely related set of political practices -- some which involves varying attitudes towards both capitalism and the state. Right anarchists like Rithbard accepr capitalism, though how that is supposed to work iwthout the law I don't undestnad, some left self-style anarchists like Noam Chomsky accept the foreseeable future a liberal social welfare state.

It's not necesasrily bad that anarchism isn't a full-bodied set of theories like Marxism has been, that may have helped save it from being sidelined the way Marxism yhas been by the failure of communism.

But the idea that it would be good to get rid of the state faces serious objections that (to my liberal democratic mind) have not been answered. The best of these are briefly summed up in History and Illinion in Politics, a book by an old teacher of mine, Raymond Geuss, who is sympathetic to but critical of left wing anarchism:

http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521805961

The book is extremely short and very clear.

jks

The book i


> snitsnat wrote:
>
> > I think the biggest problem is that anarchists
> don't theorize about
> > much. There is plenty of room for theory, but the
> antipathy to it is so
> > widespread, it seems to me, that it's unlikely
> you'll end up studying
> > anarchist ideas in academia. People do study them,
> they just aren't
> > labeled as such.


>

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