Anarchism 101

Welcome to Anarchism 101: An Anarchist Syllabus from Everyday Anarchism!

As soon as I started my podcast on the way that anarchism - mutual aid, cooperation, and nondomination - animated our lives and cultures, I started getting requests for more information on the classical anarchist canon. I had planned to weave the important anarchist thinkers of the long 19th century (roughly from the French revolution to World War I) into my podcasts. I’m still doing that, like using Emma Goldman to talk about divorce or Peter Kropotkin to talk about supply chains. But I’ve also started this series so that people who are interested in anarchism as a historical movement and as a body of theory can learn it on the podcast.

And with no reading! I’m providing links to the text for all of the articles I’ve chosen, but I’m also reading all of them as a podcast episode. So an important work of anarchist theory will just pop up in the podcast feed, and you can listen to it like any other episode. Later that month, you’ll hear me discuss the text and its author with a scholar or scholars. It will be, I hope, like taking a class on anarchism, with one reading and one discussion each month. And please email me your questions after you’ve listened to the text or the discussion!

Below you can find the schedule for 2022. If this goes well, I’ll continue the project in 2023, probably with a theme. For now, I hope you’ll join me for this exploration of anarchism’s illustrious, mostly forgotten thinkers. Once I have a few episodes posted, I intend to create a feed made up entirely of these episodes. That will be a resource for anyone - a curious follower of politics, a student in political theory, a philosophy nerd - who wants to find these historical texts and explanations of them without following along with me on episodes on Tolkien, supply chains, and soccer. I’m especially hopeful that college and high school instructors will find them useful in teaching history and politics. If you do wish to use these materials in a class, please contact me; if I’m available, I’ll be happy to zoom in and speak to your students!

But that’s in the future. For now, this project is just beginning. I hope you enjoy the episodes as they unfold, and please don’t hesitate to reach out.

In Mutual Aid,
Graham

Anarchism 101: An Anarchist Syllabus from Everyday Anarchism
Graham Culbertson

Schedule for 2022

January
Text: “Anarchism: What it Really Stands For” - Emma Goldman
Discussion Episode: Emma Goldman's "Anarchism" with Penny A. Weiss and Kathy Ferguson

February
Text: “Anarchism” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition) - Peter Kropotkin
Discussion Episode: Peter Kropotkin's "Anarchism" with Ruth Kinna

March
Text: Excerpt from Chapter 1 of What is Property? - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Discussion Episode with Edward Castleton (forthcoming)

April
Text: Excerpt from God and the State - Mikhail Bakunin
Discussion Episode with Mark Leier (forthcoming)

May
Text: “The Trial of 1871” Chapter 11 of The Red Virgin - Louise Michel

June
Text: "The Principles of Anarchism" and "Speech on June 29 of the Founding Convention of the IWW" - Lucy Parsons

July
Text: "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" - Oscar Wilde

August
Text: "Anarchism and American Traditions" - Voltairine de Cleyre

September
Text: "A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between Two Workers" - Errico Malatesta

October
Text: "To Arms! To Arms! For Land and Liberty" - Ricardo Flores Magón

November
Text: Part 1 of The State - Randolph Bourne

December
Text: "Passive Resistance" from Indian Home Rule - Mohandas Gandhi

See you for more Anarchism in 2023!