Howard J. Ehrlich - Best of social anarchism

Copyright 2013 by by Social Anarchism. The authors of the individual chapters retain the copyright to their own work.

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See Sharp Press

P.O. Box 1731

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The Best of Social Anarchism / edited by Howard Ehrlich and a.h.s. boy (pseud.)

Tucson, Ariz. : See Sharp Press, 2013.

ISBN 9781937276461

Contents: Introduction / Jeff Shantz Preface : Social Anarchism: An Editors History / Howard Ehrlich THEORY: Anarchism and the question of human nature / Thomas Martin Reflections on the New Anarchism / Brian Morris Toward a General Theory of Anarchafeminism / Howard Ehrlich Against The Law: Anarchist Criminology / Jeff Ferrell Economics for Anarchists A Review / Frank Lindenfeld Steps Toward a Post-Western Anarchism / Thomas S. Martin A Critical History of Harrisonburg Food Not Bombs / Peter Gelderloos EDUCATION: On Scholars, Intellectuals, and Anarchists / Howard J. Ehrlich The Role of Anarchist Intellectuals / Jeff Stein Anarchists in the Academy / Jeff Shantz Anarchist in Academe / Kingsley Widmer What Should Be Done About Higher Education? / Brian Martin Ira Shor: Critical Teaching and Everyday Life / Len Krimerman and Susan Corrente -- NOTABLE FIGURES: Colin Wards Everyday Anarchy / Jeff Shantz An Interview with Colin Ward Reading Political Justice / Arthur Efron Marie Flemings The Geography of Freedom / John Clark No Authority But Oneself / Sharon Presley Community in the Anarcho-Individualist Society / Richard P. Hiskes Against Everything That Is / Daniel Dylan Young Chomskys Contributions to Anarchism / Robert Graham -- CONTEMPORARY VOICES: Poetry Like Bread / Neala Schleuning Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology / Janet Biehl Dear Social Anarchism / Mitchel Cohen Burn Bibles not Flags! / Sam Sloss Los Angeles, 1992- The Lessons Revisited / Howard J. Ehrlich Some Observations on the Oklahoma City Bombing / Howard J. Ehrlich PRACTICE: Organizing Communities / Tom Knoche Paying Taxes: Its Just Routine / Jane Meyerding Anarchy on the Airwaves / Ron Sakolsky Living in Community / SYD The Roundhouse Co-op / William F. Walker Consensus / Caroline Estes -Fetishizing Process / Mark Lance Democracy without Elections / Brian Martin.
1. Social Anarchism History. 2. Anarchism -- Periodicals. 3. United States -- Social conditions --1980- . 4. United States -- Politics and government -- 1945-1989. 5. United States -- Politics and government --1989- . 6. Press, Anarchist -- United States -- History. I. Ehrlich, Howard J. II. boy, a.h.s.

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www.bestofsocialanarchism.org

Preface

Jeff Shantz

T o achieve any real lasting success, movements for social change require infrastructures of resistance. Indeed, in the absence of such support, even lively and enthusiastic mobilizations can dissipate very quickly without much impact, as the Occupy encampments of 2011 vividly illustrate. Through struggle and the pressing realities of meeting material, cultural, personal, and social needs and desires, communities develop infrastructures of resistance to sustain themselves and to provide the support necessary to sustain ongoing struggles and the inspiration of the new world they seek to make. These infrastructures of resistance have included a range of institutions, venues, organizations and practices. Some important examples include alternative media and publishing, shared spaces such as social centers, bookstores, union halls and bars, workers campgrounds and medical clinics.

The building, maintenance, and nurturing of such infrastructures of resistance is a key part of social anarchist practice. For social anarchists, thoroughgoing social change including what might be called revolutionary change toward anarchist social relations involves the constant extension of spheres of mutual aid and solidarity until they make up the bulk of human social activities and relationships. These are processes of rendering the state obsolete an obvious anachronism for all to see. At the same time, the community-based infrastructures of resistance provide bases of social defense against forces of reaction.

Part of this social transformation is imaginal or ideational it involves advances in the struggles over ideas. In the words of Social Anarchisms dedicated editor Howard Ehrlich, it requires the development of anarchist transfer cultures, the perspectives and practices by which we sustain the move beyond state capitalism to anarchist social relations, building them as we go. Ehrlich describes anarchist transfer cultures in these terms:

A transfer culture is that agglomeration of ideas and practices that guide people in making the trip from the society here to the society there in the future As part of the accepted wisdom of that transfer

The journal Social Anarchism has long been a key resource in developing and nurturing anarchist transfer cultures. It has played an important part in sustaining ideas and practices of anarchy against the dominance of archic ideologies. Art and literature, as well as economic and political analysis, have always found a home side by side in the journals pages.

Unlike many movement publications of the last few decades, it has done so through thick and thin, high and low, surviving and even thriving both when movements have enjoyed an upsurge, as after the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, and during periods of demobilization or stalled growth, as during the early 1990s. With the renewal of anarchist movements in the twenty-first century, Social Anarchism continues to provide one of the most important forums of anarchist discussion and debate. Few journals can make this claim. As someone who has spent years working in anarchist free skools and infoshops, as well as community and workplace organizing, I can attest to the ongoing relevance of Social Anarchism and its significance as a resource for anarchism over decades. For much of the 1990s Social Anarchism was a primary intellectual resource, even the resource for those seeking thoughtful and incisive analysis of a range of social issues, theories and practices of social change. Many free skool classes right up to the present have made use of articles from Social Anarchism as key readings and starting points for discussion. Combining theoretical depth with consistent accessibility and respectful exchange of ideas, Social Anarchism has been and continues to make a crucial contribution to anarchist ideas as well as offering a real venue for learning about anarchism. It is, quite simply, essential reading.

Social Anarchism has always displayed the strongest principles of anarchism in action. It has maintained and supported a commitment to honest and sincere engagement. Avoiding the sectarianism and exclusivity that mar perhaps too many radical and movement-based publications, Social Anarchism has always remained open to new and alternative ideas and critical interchange with opposing viewpoints and perspectives. Thus in this collection the reader will see principled debates and discussions with ideas that are often posed as being outside the realm of social anarchism, and which are even hostile toward it. A few of the perspectives encountered in this collection include individualist, Randian objectivism, neo-primitivism, anti-civilization, and, well, sociology (I say as a sociologist).

Social Anarchism has always exemplified the sometimes forgotten basis of critique. Critique is not about dismissal or ridicule of opposing views. Rather it is about indentifying and maintaining that which is useful and insightful while moving beyond that which is inaccurate and ineffective in analysis.