In 1923, the war for leadership in the power vacuum of post-Tsarist Russia was decided in favor of the Bolsheviks. The anarchists were prosecuted, banished, sometimes executed. In order to prevent anarchist insurgents from revolting against the newly installed Marxist government in Moscow, Lenin ordered Trotsky to find a way to keep the anarchists “intellectually [...]

On February 4th, we remember one of the great feminists of our time: the American writer and activist Betty Friedan. She is remembered today as a well-spoken and intelligent defender of women’s rights and approached subjects such as sexism and gender-rolls from a psychological, rather than a sociological point of view. In the sixties and [...]

Happy Birthday W.H. Auden!

(To JS/07/M/378) This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense [...]

Last Monday, January 9th 2012, the Appellate Commerce Court in Paris liquidated the French ferry firm SeaFrance, after the European Commission ruled the bail-out by the French government to be illegal. A very unfortunate event. Not because of the inability for the French State to nationalize yet another service economy enterprise, but because of the [...]

On January 7th, we remember the birthday of Nikolai Tchaikovsky (1851 – 1926), one of the great Russian anarchist intellectuals and founder of the famous Circle of Tchaikovsky. He was a strong opponent of violence and Bolshevism, and always propagated class reconciliation as a means to achieve a free society, not class warfare.

In the [...]

On January 4th we celebrate the birthday of one of the most influential contemporary anarchist thinkers in the US: Bob Black.

Black is mostly known for his contemporary works on anarchist thought and anarchist epistemology such as “The Abolition of Work and Other Essays”, “Beneath the Underground”, “Friendly Fire” and “After Anarchism”. Anarchists who use [...]

Interesting Appellate Court case finally ruled in my native town of Ghent (Belgium) this morning. Last year, 51 year-old Steven De Geynst from Temse was detained by police authorities after staff members of a local supermarket caught him red-handed while he was stealing two bags of muffins from one of the supermarket’s waste containers. He [...]

Henry Miller (1891 – 1980) was one of the few notable surrealist novelists in America and a revolutionary literary virtuoso. I want to talk to you about his most renowned and controversial novel: “Tropic of Cancer”, first published in France in 1934. Aside from its controversial introduction in the US, the book counts as one [...]

On December 22nd there was a general strike of the socialist, liberal and catholic public sector unions against the Belgian government’s austerity measures and pension reforms. Belgian government employees, among the most well-paid government workers in the EU, would be required to work 2 years longer and would see their pensions cut. Since Belgium’s credit rating [...]

As anarchists of the peaceful kind, we prefer to spread our message of liberty without authority through the means education, Socratic questioning and lively debate. For us students – might I even say: young intellectuals? – this academic method of (inductive) reasoning and logical argumentation is just the sensible thing to do. We’re all bright, [...]