Anarchist & Radical Book Club discussion

Isn´t a book like that contrary to the anarchist movement?

Not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but "Fighting for Ourselves" may be a good place to begin...
http://www.selfed.org.uk/read/ffo

You may find Eric Mann's "Playbook for Progressives" to be similar to what you're looking for. It's been called the "Art of War for organizers" and outlines good theory behind political organizing. That being said, Eric Mann is a liberal and NOT an anarchist, and is a rat who talked to the cops about the Weather Underground.

The book however is still useful for anarchists looking to improve their understanding of organizing.

Rules for Radicals seems the closest approximation to me (Alinsky described it more as a version of "the Prince" for those who want to take power away from the powerful, rather than Art of War).

Anarchists don't seem to have thought deeply or written extensively about strategy and winning struggles through anarchist methods. And, honestly, it shows...

I will recommend Introduction to Civil War: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...

dude you just plugged your own book without even being up front about it.

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Kalin, You haven't read it and have no idea why I said what I did. If my books where to be widely read, I don't know if I'd live. What do you want to know? Ask me instead of accusing me.

And Kalin, I agree with you "Anarchist don't seem to have thought deeply or written extensively about strategy and winning struggles through anarchist methods. And, honestly, it shows..." Can one remove power without replacing it? Can that moment last when there is always someone to reinstate it? It seems Anarchism is not fully developed. Many of us are in between ideas and are not aware enough to see it.

David, can you give a general idea of what you're about. I clicked on your book page but it's a little too abstract.

What I'm about is creating a realistic reaction to our current global crisis's through a complete shift of what we as humans being value or how we think about what we value. Then shift the entirety of the system in a rational direction to improve our survivability. The reason most everything I write online is abstract is, trying to explain in a post what I see, cannot be conveyed intricately enough for a proper awareness or mental expansion. Besides do we really expect an answer to our massive failures to be delivered in a post?

For Anarchist you guys sure like rules and control. Well it seems I'm wasting my time here. Where one cannot spread information, is a place dead in the mind. If eventually any of you read my book and want to contact me, please do.

David wrote: "For Anarchist you guys sure like rules and control. Well it seems I'm wasting my time here. Where one cannot spread information, is a place dead in the mind. If eventually any of you read my book a..." anarchism doesn't mean "no rules."

The closest I can think of is Mao or Che.

What Che talking about Willis?

I think you guys might be interested in especifismo or platformism if your wanting a pre-prescribed battle plan.

ETA I have removed the advert from above.

Why not start from prefiguative politics and see what can be gleamed from the Art of War. We can host an anarchist reading here for the group if your willing to contribute. There is much that can be gleamed even for libertarians reading books like The Prince or even Leninist books etc...

I am pushed for time, but the Art of War sounds interesting.

"Talking about the importance of a strong leader, etc."

There are scattered essays and interviews around the internet from different sources focusing on the concept of anti-authoritarian leadership, and framing leadership as various horizontal activities (initiative-taking, support for the development of comrades).

I would really enjoy a collective anarchist reading of the art of war, would participate. Could also track down and share some of those essays to read alongside if there's interest.

If someone wants to formulate a suggestion just give me a shout and I will push it.

On the issue of leadership, the anti-authoritarian reading of it is about the capability of initiative coming from the grass roots activists, not people offering benign control of others.

I see this thread is a bit old. But if a small group is dedicated enough to read it and actually discuss it, then I would like to join.

As far as parsing out the non-hierarchical stuff: The passages about how the state prefers to wage war, and why it prefers to wage wars at all, do have a lot to teach us as far as our understanding of the state is concerned. Not to mention how those preferences become that very field in which our own strategies must take place. In other words, it might be valuable to read the state-focused passages closely as well, or at least negatively, to know which ways not to wage war.

There has been a line of thought on these themes, that explicitly couple (1) waging war against the state, (2) WITHOUT that warfare must end in a seizure of state power, or becoming state-like in the process. The history of guerrilla warfare give us plenty of examples of failing to think the latter. What I mean is that, obviously, there are an abundance of thought traditions on how to wage war against the state, but that most of them are premised on, eventually, if not in the process, becoming a state oneself.

This failure really seems to stem from a failure of a certain conception of war. The very idea of what warfare could be. The beauty of Sun Tzu, as I get the text without having read it in full, is that it does not exclusively involve the most fetishized forms of war (guns, pistols, bombs). It is mainly about abstract things such as bluffing, hiding, surprise, position, strengths and weaknesses, visibility/invisibility etc. Obviously all these problematics apply to many aspects of movements. They do not limit themselves to the old armies and battlefields or, more recently, the urban guerillas. War can also be waged in many other ways, and on other terrains, than those of armies, whether they be the Red Army or the Red Army Fraction. The first did eventually succeed overpowering the state, but only by ending up a state itself, and the latter was exterminated, while operating as a suicidal micro-state in the process.

At the end of the day, the anarchist problematic is how to wage war against the state, and win, without turning into an army.

One example of such non-state strategizing that I am referring to is the line of thought that such people as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari tried to develop (the canonical text is Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, but it is a work that is notoriously difficult to pick up and use at once). Their term for such a movement against the state was 'war machine', and those that have picked up where they left and developed that term could be a fruitful reference point when reading Art of War. I am specifically thinking of before mentioned Tiqqun, because they are more explicit in drawing up a frame for non-state forms of warfare on the backdrop of previous attempts such as the failed and suicidal RAF, as well as more "prefigurative" (but exclusively so, and therefore not warlike enough) attempts as the hippie ghetto. Both RAF and the hippie ghetto are traps the war machine can fall into, should it put too much emphasis on warfare or prefiguration, respectively. (The go-to texts here, although they are very short and only schematic, are "Diffuse Guerrilla Warfare", "Living-and-struggling" and "Sorrows of the Civilized Warrior" from This is Not a Program).

Disclaimer: I am aware of the troubled relation that anglo-saxon anarchists have to continental philosophy, or especially when it comes to the meeting of French philosophy with the Autonomia-tendency of Italy. I'm thinking of the apparent tension between the intense Californian reception of said meeting and the almost allergic reaction other people seem to have. (I am of course shamelessly going with my prejudice here, but don't tell me there is not a grain of truth in this?). I say this because Deleuze and Guattari are perhaps exemplary of that meeting. But all exotic lingo aside, I think there is a lot to learn from this strand of non-state theories of war. (At the end of the day, how many such theories do we even have to pick from?). Again, the crucial aspect, the one that separates 'war machines' from other kinds of warfare against the state, is that it SPECIFICALLY must not turn into a state itself, whether in the guise of the suicidcal army or the prefigurative ghetto. Any line of thought or reading group able to give answers to that problem is worth my time.

Dan, sorry for the late response (I somehow do not get updates when there is a reply to threads). You probably already realised, but the texts from tiqqun – which is not an author, but the name of a journal around the millennium – are definitely not easier to digest than TIC. Myself, on the first reading I left the book early in for around a year. Then I picked it up again and read it all the way through, thinking "this is extremely important, but I don't understand it", then I read it once more a half year later and it suddenly began to grow on me very fast. Just to tell you that sometimes very dense and compact theory can be a long journey, and this was definitely one for me.

Hey Dan and fellow club members.

I think that Gene Sharp's The Methods of Nonviolent Action can be of much help in any struggle against the powers at being. Mainly because it has been written, added and rewritten in action.

It is freely available at: Albert Einstein Institute

And his team wrote many other books on the subject, like: From Dictatorship to Democracy, Self-Liberation: A Guide to Strategic Planning for Action to End a Dictatorship or Other Oppression and "Civilian-Based Defence".

But I must confess that I haven't read any of them, but the documentaries I saw about him had me convinced of his libertarian character. I just think he is too involved in the struggles against dictators to align himself to any line of “Democracy Parties” or Anarchism.

Rômulo wrote: "Hey Dan and fellow club members.

I think that Gene Sharp's The Methods of Nonviolent Action can be of much help in any struggle against the powers at being. Mainly beca..."

Peter Gelderloos' The Failure of Nonviolence has a whole section about what a snake Gene Sharp is.

I suggest "The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics" by Philip Selznick.

Ben wrote: "Peter Gelderloos' The Failure of Nonviolence has a whole section about what a snake Gene Sharp is.

While I appreciate Peter Gelderloos, I've never been too into his writing.

I second Malte's suggestion for Introduction to Civil War which is useful right now for thinking about the ontological conditions for conflict.

But for contemporary strategy comrades in Olympia recently put out a compilation / reader for a study group they did on strategy that would be useful for people here. The reader is called 'Deceiving the Sky: Collective Experiments in Strategic Thinking'
https://no-new-ideas-press.tumblr.com...