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–1 vote
I wanted to check to see if anyone on here has read Black Flame
The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism,
Vol #1 :CounterPower.

I thought the book was wonderful and showed all the great stories from all around the world of the working class kicking ass.

Does anyone have any criticisms of the book ?

The whole book online for free:

https://libcom.org/files/Lucien%20Van%20Der%20Walt%20and%20Michael%20Schmidt%20Black%20Flame%20vol%201.pdf

But, also purchase the book from AK Press, an awesome book publisher that publishes anarchist literature.

http://www.akpress.org/blackflameakpress.html
by (230 points)

1 Answer

+1 vote
I obtained a free copy of it through the internet. I confirmed what i have read of it in other reviews. I agree that it contains some useful information and theorectical elaborations but, even from the point of view of scholarly standards of rigurosity, it is highly biased by a sectarian platformist point of view. So in the view of the author individualist anarchism is not anarchism and there is no need to deal with, not just Benjamin Tucker, Josiah Warren, and Max Stirner in order to understand anarchism but also Proudhon himself even though, even from a workerist point of view, one cannot understand the history of revolutionary syndicalism and anarcho-syndicalism without the importance of Proudhon on that.

So to me it seems as a pathetic case of sectarianism and one which just confirms the marxist-leninist influences in platformism which motivate that kind of sectarianism and historical dishonesty. Compare this "black flame" book with the main classic general works on the history of anarchism available in english. I mean works like George Woodcock´s "Anarchism: a history of libertarian ideas", Max Nettlau´s "anarchism through the times" or Daniel Guerin´s "Anarchism in theory and practice" and you will see how sectarian and reductionist the "black flame" book is.

I will argue that it is almost a marxist book on the history of anarchism in the sense that it picks in anarchism what is compatible with marxism and ignores or leaves out what it doesn´t like about it.
by (3.3k points)
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