Anarchism
Anarchism and anarchists and anything associated with the thinking, the people, or the history generally get a raw deal from the media and even mainstream historians. It is true that anarchism is profoundly anti-authoritarian, but its popular association with violence (wild-eyed bearded men throwing bombs) is exaggerated, even fictionalized by the very forces threatened by it, namely governments and the media with vested interests in things as they are.
As with any subversive political and economic movement, some proponents became impatient and felt justified in striking out in vengeance or justice. Thus you have Alexander Berkman and his attempted assassination of Pennsylvanian Henry Clay Frick in 1892 and Leon Czolgosz and his successful assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Berkman, however, served his time in jail, wrote a deep and insightful account of his experience and went on to write more worthwhile books on the subject which possessed his life. (Czolgosz did not have that opportunity, being executed forty-five days after the death of his victim.)
Anarchism survived its dramatic beginnings in the 19th Century, however, and interested readers can find its articulate concern with agricultural reform, labor rights, and prophetic worries about the growth of the surveillance state in many excellent books. Here you will find books and a superb documentary on Sacco and Vanzetti (as well as Woody Guthrie's cd of his investigation into the miscarriage of justice). Here you will find histories, biographies, anthologies, memoirs, and fiction. It is a rich tradition, relevant to this day and to the future.
Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century
Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century
A new, inclusive union movement with a contemporary vision and an eye toward building social and economic power can remake society.
Overcoming Capitalism is a book about strategy, particularly how the powerless can get the upper hand. And it’s written for everyone—not a specialized, self-selected audience. Tom Wetzel carefully explains how capitalism works and how the structure is stacked against us with an eye toward where power lies and how we can tip the scales.
The book is a twenty-first century reworking of the approach to unionism. The United States has a dramatic history of workers organizing on the job. In the last seventy odd years labor organizations have made peace with owners, and wages, various protections, and safety has diminished. All during an era that, despite its ups and downs, has been extremely profitable for the ownership class. Wetzel provides a solution to that failure by showing how a democratic outcome can be built into the method of struggle for social change, giving working people the means to ensure they will end up in control of the labor process and will build a from-the-bottom-up ecosocialism. But this isn’t the old white-guy-in-a-hard-hat unionism of the previous century. The working class has changed. Life under capitalism has changed. How we think about unionism must also change. While the political and capitalist class wring their hands over the environmental crisis and economic inequality we can see the immediate appeal of a union movement with an expanded mission to wrest control from the wealthy and powerful before they cost-shift us into extinction.
Praise for Overcoming Capitalism
"This book is an invitation to imagine a world where everyday people determine their own lives both in the workplace and the community. It updates the radical syndicalist tradition for the 21st Century. After reading you may feel the sudden urge to fire your boss, show the landlord the door, and conspire with your neighbors to change just about everything."
—James Tracy, author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power
"Tom Wetzel's probing inquisitiveness, together with his astute thoughts and vivid observations, breathe life into each and every chapter in this exhilarating book, bringing the reader closer to everyday life after capitalism."
—Andrej Grubačić, co-author of Wobblies and Zapatistas
"Tom Wetzel is one of the most important libertarian socialist thinkers and activists in the United States today. His book, Overcoming Capitalism, is a must read for anyone interested in alternatives to capitalism. Wetzel draws lessons from the history of libertarian socialist movements and struggles over the past century that would do an academic historian proud! But unlike academics, Wetzel puts that deep knowledge of history to use in formulating a concrete and informed vision of what kind of socialism we should be fighting for in the twenty-first century. Written in plain English, free of leftist jargon, full of common sense as well as nuance, Wetzel has produced a “gem.” This is just the kind of book leftists need to read to avoid repeating mistakes and reinventing square wheels."
—Robin Hahnel, author of Democratic Economic Planning
Tom Wetzel has written on labor history, worker struggles, libertarian socialist ideas, and housing struggles since the 1970s. He has been published by ZNet and ROAR Magazine and is a former editor of the anarcho-syndicalist magazine ideas & action, where many of his essays were published. He resides in Hayward, CA.