“The myth of Nin or Durruti is of no use to us at all, whereas their shortcomings and mistakes are useful, because they teach us something. The myths of yesterday are the chains of today; to reveal their errors allows us to advance beyond the point where they failed.” Agustin […]
Tommy Lawson
15 posts
Ted Reese’s ‘The End of Capitalism: The Thought of Henryk Grossman’ sets out to introduce the ideas and life of Henryk Grossman, an important if somewhat little known Marxist economist. Grossman, a Polish born economist wrote ‘The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System, a study in Marxian […]
Foundational Concepts of the Specific Anarchist Organisation is a new pamphlet by Tommy Lawson. In this pamphlet Lawson introduces the basic theoretical concepts that inform Anarchist-Communists and their organisational practices. From a set of theoretical concepts forms of organisation and strategies shared in common across the history of the anarchist […]
19th of July, 2022 marks 86 years since the Spanish Revolution. Every year that passes is a new chance to reflect upon the successes and failures of such a grand moment in history. When we study history as revolutionaries we usually consider the balance of forces, economic factors, ideologies, organisations, […]
Francesco Giovanni Fantin was an Italian anarchist who migrated to Australia in 1924. Less than twenty years later, in November 1942, he was murdered by a fellow detainee in Interment Camp 14A, Loveday, South Australia. Born in 1901 in the small town of San Vito in Northern Italy, Francesco Fantins […]
The following is a slightly edited version of a talk given to a panel hosted by Socialist Unity and Geelong Anarchist Communists in March, 2022. The topic of the panel was ‘should socialists participate in elections,’ however the idea was first posited as to discuss why anarchists do not run […]
Author’s Note: A number of years ago I chanced upon a pamphlet, The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya; Crisis, Armed Struggle and Dictatorship 1967-1985, compiled by Paul Sharkey, at an anarchist bookfair. The contents were fairly interesting. Presented was an anecdotal, inconsistent history of an anarchist organisation in a small South American […]
Agustín Guillamóns latest translated work “Insurrection: The Bloody Events of May 1937 in Barcelona” is a brilliant political history of the Stalinist and collaborationist-anarchist counter-revolution in Spain, and the last gasp of the proletarian rank-and-file resistance to it. Originally published in Spanish in 2017, AK Press published the English translation […]
On Monday the 20th of September, a small gathering of nominally CFMEU Victoria members escalated into a riot and right-wing attack on the Union offices. Shop stewards and Organisers fought with rank and file members and the anti-vax rent-a-crowd. The CFMEU is nominally the most militant, powerful union in Australia. […]
Abraham Guillén’s name is not well known in the Anglosphere, but this CNT partisan and exile turned journalist, economist and theorist of guerrilla warfare is an often unsung hero of the libertarian movement. [This article in other languages: Español] Editorial Note: While we recognise Guilléns excellent contributions to libertarian military […]
In October, 1917 the Russian working class made history. The embryonic forms of workers’ democracy in the Soviets gave a landslide mandate to the Bolshevik Party, under a platform of “Peace, Bread and Land.” Acting swiftly and in conjunction with other revolutionaries, including many anarchists, the Bolsheviks captured the Winter […]
Note: This article is a short summary of the revolution in the Ukraine, written to be introductory. Perhaps no other period of revolutionary activity has been as besmirched by historians both Liberal and Marxist alike. We highly recommend reading the Anarchist FAQ section on the Russian and Ukrainian revolutions, which […]