#alexander berkman

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Nearly as soon as the Bolsheviks took power, they began to execute anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries, most of whom had fought alongside the Bolsheviks in the Revolution. They also purged elements of their own party deemed "anti-Soviet" or "counter-revolutionary." This state repression was well documented by the Soviet government, but here we have chosen to use journals and letters of those affected. Lithuanian-American Jewish anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman describe the Bolshevik betrayal: The systematic man-hunt of anarchists [...] with the result that every prison and jail in Soviet Russia filled with our comrades, fully coincided in time and spirit with Lenin's speech at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party. On that occasion Lenin announced that the most merciless war must be declared against what he termed "the petty bourgeois anarchist elements" which, according to him, are developing even within the Communist Party [...] On the very day that Lenin made the above statement, numbers of anarchists were arrested all over the country, without the least cause or explanation. The conditions of their imprisonment are exceptionally vile and brutal. (Boni, 253)

[queersatanic]

Hello !!! 💖 I'm a young satanist trying to figure out how to properly worship and live the lifestyle, but with all the Nazism and such that satanism is infected with, I'm a bit lost as to where to turn for good information that's not gonna accidentally get me on board with ideas that have nasty shit hidden in the shadows of them. Are there any good books/organizations I can look into or just some general tips? <3

We have a certain perspective on this, so bear that in mind.

What is attractive about Satanism as a concept is not really the "might is right" ideology of Anton LaVey and its worship of social stratification, and it's not The Satanic Temple's pyramid-shaped classical liberalism / Gen X trolling.

Rather, it's taking the idea that even if the story of Christian mythology were true, Satan is still the hero for looking at an omnipotent tyrant and that tyrant's proposed immutable hierarchy for the universe but choosing to rebel and grant people agency over their own lives.

And it's the idea that if the Christians say we are demonic or of the devil's party for being queer or seeking the common good of all people, well, then we're with the devil and down to party.

For that reason, anarchism is more central to Satanism than wearing black or lighting candles, even though the aesthetics are what distinguish it from other strains.

From that, Errico Malatesta is a good place to start because he wrote for a long time and focused on pamphlet-style works that could make sense to a typical person, rather than academics.

Malatesta is easy to read, and still relevant in lots of ways because he lived through so much and lived his ideals (famously, for example, refusing to talk to the cops after he was shot by a fellow anarchist over an ideological dispute).

"The ABCs of Anarchism" by Alexander Berkman is also a good introductory work for establishing fundamental values and why.

You also can listen to that one as an audio book over at Audible Anarchist.

Note that both of those are straight white men, and the "mainstream" of anarchism has often had a problem of failing to recognize or live by principles of opposing all hierarchies, including white supremacy and cishetero-patriarchy. The fact that anarchist Becky Edelsohn "dated" Berkman when she was 16 and he 36 (and that this was supported by Berkman's previous partner Emma Goldman) is one example of this. Mikhail Bakunin gave us one of the best quotes of all time regarding anarcho-satanism ("But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds"); Bakunin was also a racist.

Other people can give better advice and examples, but Indigenous Anarchism, Black Anarchism, Anarkata, Queer Anarchism, and Anarcha-Feminism are all areas that a person needs to put work into in order to undo the kyriarchy — the whole structure of interconnected systems of oppression we're indoctrinated into and subjected to.

"But what does that have to do with Satanism?" Mainly it's to help you spot when something you come across is engaging in the sort of hierarchical, fascistic, or even neo-Nazi ideas that LaVeyan Satanism and its offshoots have always had connected with them. They're not always obvious, and having good principles established is the best immunization and antidote to being exposed to new ideas with euphemisms and shibboleths you can't be expected to be prepared for.

You also can come up with your own rituals and ideas. For example, the Satanic Flame Ritual we have is not due to access to some secret knowledge but it helps externalize and objectivize an internal, subjective, emotional process. Things like candles and flames or altars are best seen in that light.

Anyway, hopefully that helps. It's not that you should never read something like The Satanic Bible or other esoteric works to get ideas. It is that Satanism is the exact opposite of place to look for good ideology or consistency, so you want to start somewhere else for that (we say anarchism) and then look to Satanism and other Satanists for aesthetics and inspiration for rituals that you can modify and integrate into your life in ways that best serve you.

[jaewul]

More propaganda from the 1929 anarchist book

[nando161mando]

"Many are the lies that pass for truths, but the greatest and most pernicious of them all is the cunning insistence on harmony between capital and labor.

It is the harmony of inevitable, eternal discord, the symphony of master and slave, the love of the jackal for its prey."

— Alexander Berkman

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Alexander Berkman! (November 21, 1870)

An influential anarchist thinker and activist, Alexander Berkman was born in what is now Vilnius to a well-off Jewish family. From a young age, he found himself drawn to radical thoughts and ideas which were growing in the Russian Empire, and devoured revolutionary literature. At the age of 18, he moved to New York City, where he fell in with anarchist circles and formed a lifelong relationship with fellow anarchist Emma Goldman. In 1892, amidst the Homestead Strike, Berkman attempted to assassinate factory manager Henry Clay Frick, but failed, and spent 14 years in prison as a consequence. He wrote his memoirs while in prison, and continued to write after his release, until he and Goldman were deported to Russia for their opposition to American involvement in World War I. Initially supportive of the Bolshevik Revolution, their attitude soon soured, and they left Russia for France, where, in ill health, Berkman took his own life in 1936.

[recursive-rupture]

Anti-war manifesto of 1915.

[todaygwenlearned]

Alexander Berkman: What is Communist Anarchism? Chapter 23: Non-Communist Anarchism.

In this chapter Alexander Berkman criticises the two other major schools of anarchism in his time as he sees them, which are individualist anarchists and mutualists. He is only comparing schools of anarchism and not comparing anarchism or anarcho-communism to capitalism or Marxist-Leninism.

Berkman asserts that communist anarchism would be the most desirable and practical form of society. What I think he means by this is that it would strike a balance between most desirable and most practical, maximizing both.

He asserts that all anarchists believe that government means injustice and oppression, that it's invasive and that it enslaves. He says that freedom can only exist in a society where there is no compulsion of any kind.

While anarcho-communists believe that only a social revolution can abolish government and establish anarchy, he says that only anarcho-communists have a viable path to that anarchy. He says that individualist anarchists do not believe in revolution but that present society will gradually develop out of a governmental to a non-governmental condition. That it'll just happen if they educated people about anarchism. The individualists are described by Berkman as followers of Stirner, Tucker, and Tolstoy. The Tolstoyan anarchists, in particular, he says, believe in non-resistance, which he implies is a non-starter as radical politics go.

He concedes that mutualists at least have a plan, but that the plan is flawed. He says that mutualists say that the real problem in society is that the tendency toward monopoly guarantees wealth inequality and that the remedy to that is mutualist banking that gives out free loans with no interest. They say that monopolies can only exist if governments enforce them and that by abolishing government there can be no more monopolies and gradually the spread of wealth will become narrower and narrower with the rich being not that rich and the poor being not very poor. Berkman's major criticism of mutualism is that any kind of barter or trade requires a system of private property, which must be enforced. The difference between this proposal and anarcho-communism is that the latter proposes the social ownership of all the means of production and the products produced with them. This means that anyone can use the means of production because they belong to everyone, no one is restricted from using them. But when you take into consideration the generations of knowledge and the social nature of production, it's baseless to claim that anything you make solely belongs to you.

Like, for instance, if I make a drawing and sell it for $100, nobody would dispute that that $100 is mine and that the drawing now belongs to the person I sold it to. But in order to make that drawing I drew upon the labour of at least dozens of other people and the distilled and synthesized knowledge of countless artists that I've learned from and been influenced by. Now, the paper and the pencil and the pen and the ink I've all already paid for, but I am only obligated to pay for those things because they're all produced in a capitalist mode of production that deprives each worker along the chain of production from raw materials to useable tools of the right to dispose of these products as they wish. In the absence of that it would be at the very least tacky to demand something in exchange for my product.

The way Berkman describes mutualists sounds very much like anarcho-capitalism inasmuch as it seems to require everyone promising not to unduly exploit or coerce their fellow being. That as long as everyone upholds the principles of mutualism everything will work out great. This reminds me of the anarcho-capitalist idea of the non-violence principle (NVP). The idea of the NVP is that in an anarcho-capitalist society everything will work fine and everyone will be fine as long as nobody does any violence to each other. I think that's a tall order to say the least. Putting aside for a moment that the violence of the state is required to enforce the right to private property, these utopians believe that people who have no work and are starving will place the NVP above their own hunger. It's fantastical.

One criticism I have of Berkman is that I don't believe that government is the sole source of oppression in a capitalist society. For certain it has the power to oppress and indeed that is its function, but it doesn't do it for its own sake or benefit. It does it for the owning class, the capitalist class. Government is merely an mechanism through which privilege is maintained through repression. Government is certainly the enemy of anarchy, but it is merely a front for the real power.

[abloodeprivedfemale]

Alexander Berkman died for our sins.

[quotesfromall]

Already in the first days of the Revolution, early in 1918, when Lenin first announced to the world his socio-economic program in its minutest details, the roles of the people and of the Party in the revolutionary reconstruction were strictly separated and definitely assigned. On the one hand, an absolutely submissive socialist herd, a dumb people; on the other, the omniscient, all-controlling Political Party. What is inscrutable to all, is an open book to It. In the land there may be only one indisputable source of truth — the State. But the Communist State is, in essence and practice, the dictatorship of the Party only, or — more correctly — the dictatorship of its Central Committee. Each and every citizen must be, first and foremost, the servant of the State, its obedient functionary, un-questioningly executing the will of his master — if not as a matter of conscience, then out of fear. All free initiative, of the individual as well as of the collectivity, is eliminated from the vision of the State. The people’s Soviets are transformed into sections of the Ruling Party; the Soviet institutions become soulless offices, mere transmitters of the will of the center to the periphery. All expressions of State activity must be stamped with the approving seal of Communism as interpreted by the faction in power. Everything else is considered superfluous, useless and dangerous. This system of barrack absolutism, supported by bullet and bayonet, has subjugated every phase of life, stopping neither before the destruction of the best cultural values, nor before the most stupendous squandering of human life and energy.

Alexander Berkman, Russian Revolution and the Communist Party

[pterrorgrine]

every rage against the machine song

[guitar riff that incites bloodthirst]

THROW A BRICK AT A COP [fills derived from riff]

THROW A BRICK AT A COP

THROW A BRICK, THROW A BRICK, THROW IT

THROW A BRICK AT A COP

GO OUTSIDE AFTER THIS CONCERT AND

THROW A BRICK AT A COP

[guitar riff]

[stripped down rhythmic part]

Throw it, throw it, throw a brick

Throw it, throw it [x2]

[rap part]

parabolic motion of a ceramic block

impact to the skull and it makes a body drop

slap chop coppers with a steel file knife

life flight fellows down the thin blue line, AAAAUUUGGHH

THROW IT, THROW IT

[riff but more atonal and with weird electronic noises on top]

THROW A BRICK AT A COP, THROW IT

THROW A BRICK AT A COP, YEAH THROW IT

COP ON THE STREET RIGHT AFTER THIS CONCERT YEAH

THROW A BRICK AT THAT COP

[spoken] here's a bunch of bricks we brought, everybody take a free brick for later! UNH!

[funk dance break]

[quiet part]

masonry unit

blue reign of terror

construction material

for the new era

aaaahhh, masonry unit

blue reign of terror

construction material

FOR THE NEW ERA, AAAAUUUUGGGHHH

[riff now fully polyphonic with vocals]

THROW A BRICK AT A COP

THROW A BRICK AT A COP

GO OUTSIDE AFTER THIS CONCERT AND

THROW A BRICK AT A COP

yeah!

[totallytrucked]

reading the chapter of the us history textbook on labor disputes is so funny as someone who was raised on howard zinn and who's grandparents had a poster of a strike in their living room

[juggaloyaoi]

this communist anarchism shit seems real asfuck

[jaewul]

This book was written in 1929 and it's telling some truths

[nando161mando]

It is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation.

-- Alexander Berkman

[sinistersinister]

I just remembered Musk changed Twitter to X. But Mr. X wasn’t inspired by Musk! Musk isn’t evil in the same way. I needed a random letter

[recursive-rupture]

Front cover of the first issue of Mother Earth, an anarchist journal edited by Emma Goldman, and later Alexander Berkman.