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Anarchism and Its Aspirations (Anarchist Interventions)

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One of the most common questions I hear is people asking for nice books that provide a basic idea of what Anarchism actually is and what it stands for. I finally have a book by someone who's written it recently, and is still alive, so this is the one I'm going to recommend. "Anarchism and Its Aspirations" by Cindy Milstein is a short, concise but great intro text which you can read in a few hours. The book paints anarchism as a hopeful school of thought that sees the best in humanity while recognizing that centralized power and inequality does bad things to human condition. Milstein points out what anarchists are for as well as the usual idea of what they are against, freedom "to choose" as well as freedom "from wants", something that liberalism and capitalism both miss by overemphasizing one over the other.

Anarchism also poses the way to do it, by organizing from the bottom up as democratically as possible instead of top-down, working to change things in the hear and now as well as visioning a better world. Anarchists traditionally have tried to live the change they want to see, pre-figuring their politics into their organizations. They also actively work to create spaces that envision what they're looking to create, like social centers and infoshops. Anarchists also recognize that there is a democratic impulse within people and that often revolutions come about when this impulse reaches a breaking point, only to be later crushed by the people who take power in the name of the revolution, as can be seen in the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Mexican Revolution, Spanish Revolution, or more recently in Gwangju, South Korea. Anarchism is anti-state and anti-capitalist, a libertarian form of socialism, and shares a similar vision with groups who do not consider themselves Anarchists, like the zapatistas, council communists, autonomous marxists, or the situationists. And one of the nice things, Milstein points out, is that it leaves room for disagreement beyond that, especially in the forms of emphasis, whether it be on class struggle, racial politics, women's liberation, queer liberation, ecological justice, or some combination of these and more.

I've called myself an anarchist for nearly a decade now, and I've got to say that this is probably the best recently published book I've read on anarchism, and deserves to be placed amongst the classics.

In this wonderful new book by the brilliant writer and political activist Cindy Milstein, we are presented with an inspirational vision of what a liberatory, ecological society free of hierarchy and domination might look like. Emphasizing a politics of reconstruction rather than just opposition, she eloquently speaks about the need for socialist libertarians to build counter-institutions like workers' cooperatives, neighborhood assemblies, town meetings, and community mediation boards where individuals can work together to make decisions democratically on a face-to-face level. As such, instead of reclaiming the streets, she insists that we reclaim the cities, transforming them into egalitarian municipalities in harmony with nature. In this depressing historical moment shaped by the interlocking crises of corporate globalization, imperialist war, climate instability, and social reaction, Milstein's optimistic and accessible book is literally a breath of fresh air, encouraging readers to live ethical, meaningful lives and to remake our world according to the humane left libertarian values of mutual aid, social equality, voluntary association, and ecological sustainablity.

I think that this book is a great (concise) articulation of the contemporary anarchist movement. If you ever wondered what all those kids in black are on about, look no further.