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Luminary
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1. Daniel Guerin Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (1970).
2. Albert Meltzer, Anarchism: Arguments for and against
3. Rusolf Rocker, Anarchi-syndicalism: Theory and Practice (half the chapters are theory, half are history, bur they are jumbled together. My advice is to skip the birs on history and focus on the theory.
4. Cornelius Castoriadis (read everything, but start with the Castoriadis Reader published by Blackwell, then plunder everything on the Not Bored blog where most of his essays are housed in anthologies. Eventually, you will make your way to his magnum opus, The Imaginary Institution of Society, but beware, it is heavy going and it helps to have a familiarity with the history of philosophy since Kant.
Castoriadis is how I really came to anarchism, but he would never have called himself ananarchist (although he is and is considered to be by others, not just me). What is good about Castoriadis is that he combines German Idealism, Psychoanalysis and knowledge of Ancient Greece in a way that builds a philosophical anthropology centred on our capacity for autonomy through direct democracy.
6. Agnes Heller is not an anarchist, but her Theory of Modernity is a good and useful book.
8. So is Alain Tourain's Critique of Modernity, although he, also, is not an anarchist.
9. If you get through all those, I highly recommend Friedrich Schiller's, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (1793). It looks at the nasty side of the French Revolution and asks, how can we socialise and educate people so that they have enough self restraint not to turn into monsters during a time of revolutionary conflict. He offers one answer. I think the other side of this answer is building organisations with a truely democratic culture.
2. Albert Meltzer, Anarchism: Arguments for and against
3. Rusolf Rocker, Anarchi-syndicalism: Theory and Practice (half the chapters are theory, half are history, bur they are jumbled together. My advice is to skip the birs on history and focus on the theory.
4. Cornelius Castoriadis (read everything, but start with the Castoriadis Reader published by Blackwell, then plunder everything on the Not Bored blog where most of his essays are housed in anthologies. Eventually, you will make your way to his magnum opus, The Imaginary Institution of Society, but beware, it is heavy going and it helps to have a familiarity with the history of philosophy since Kant.
Castoriadis is how I really came to anarchism, but he would never have called himself ananarchist (although he is and is considered to be by others, not just me). What is good about Castoriadis is that he combines German Idealism, Psychoanalysis and knowledge of Ancient Greece in a way that builds a philosophical anthropology centred on our capacity for autonomy through direct democracy.
6. Agnes Heller is not an anarchist, but her Theory of Modernity is a good and useful book.
8. So is Alain Tourain's Critique of Modernity, although he, also, is not an anarchist.
9. If you get through all those, I highly recommend Friedrich Schiller's, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (1793). It looks at the nasty side of the French Revolution and asks, how can we socialise and educate people so that they have enough self restraint not to turn into monsters during a time of revolutionary conflict. He offers one answer. I think the other side of this answer is building organisations with a truely democratic culture.
I gave this list to my friend and decided I should share it
