July 2019 Update (Patreon)

Hi everyone,

Have been busy this month organising me moving house. Will now be living with my friend in a flat and so no longer have to live with my abusive father. Thanks so much to you all for supporting me. This wouldn't have been possible without you. 

Youtube

This month I made four videos of me reading out historic anarchist texts. These were,

1. Manifesto of the Anarchists on Trial in Lyon (1883)

2. Communist Anarchist Group - Declaration of Principles (1887)

3. An Anarchist Program - Malatesta (1899)

4. Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1908)

The idea behind these videos is that eventually a person will be able to watch a playlist which takes them from the beginning of the anarchist movement in the 1860s to the 1940s. Am wanting to bring attention to documents produced by the movement, rather than only focusing on texts by famous authors.

I also want to bring attention to the modern anarchist movement. To this end I made a video of me reading out Role of the Revolutionary Organisation by black rose anarchist federation.

The response to Jordan Peterson on Marx should be done soonish. There have been unforeseen technical problems (broken laptop) and so the video hasn't been made yet.

PhD

Am continuing to make good progress on my PhD. I've written in total about 80,000 words. This includes footnotes. There are more than 500 footnotes.
The aim is to have a total 1st draft of the thesis by March 2020.

I've been working on my syndicalism chapters. Have finished my summary of the CGT's campaign for the eight hour day. They organised a general strike involving 200,000 workers. The strike didn't win the eight hour day but they did force the state to grant them a day off once a week. Next I have to write a summary of the CNT's Barcelona rent strike in 1931. This is important because critics of syndicalism sometimes claim it ignores community organising outside of the workplace. This isn't true at all for the CNT or the FAUD.

I've been doing lots of reading. I finished Kenyon Zimmer's book Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America. Is one of the best anarchist history books I've ever read. So def check it out if you're looking for something interesting to read.

Over the past few days I've been researching how the anarchist movement came to call itself anarchist. Have discovered that they rarely called themselves anarchists until 1876. They generally refer to themselves as collectivists, federalists or revolutionary socialists. The people who consistently call them anarchists before that are Marx and Engels. So it looks like they came to adopt the label as a result of being called anarchists by their political opponents.

Thanks so much for supporting me and making this research possible.