Hey all, I’m hoping this is the right comm for this kind of post. I’m really interested what brought my fellow lemmings to anarchism (or just radical politics in general). Was is a youtube video? A book? A conversation IRL or on the internet? For me personally it was a friend IRL who introduced me to an local anarchist collective.
books
but i was young before internets contaminated every corner of every skull
do people ever anarchise in older ages? Can a 40 year old start thinking that maybe we can be better off living in societies without archs?
Check out That Dang Dad on YouTube. Not sure his exact age or ideology, but he was a cop and proud of it until a few years ago and then came to his senses in a big way. He has some great videos discussing that transition.
I’m 30-something and I’m just now figuring it out lol
In my younger years I was a “libertarian” before figuring out capitalism was also a huge part of the problem.
Same :3
I found Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, and Bookchin all around my 30th year. We can always change and advance.
What books do you recommend
The Conquest of Bread is a great layman explainer where a smart economist introduces to you many examples of how mutual aid and anarchist organization are not only practical but often essential, natural, and superior. It’s examples are outdated (And some of it’s predictions were prophetic!) but it’s points are all preserved to this day.
Bullshit Jobs is a pop economism / sociology book where an anthropologist walks you through the absurdity of our modern economy, specifically our systems of employment and work, to build a case that our system is designed around backward incentives.
God and the State is a fiery call to action by one of if not the most successful anarchist political organizers in history. It is a brief but powerful calling out and condemnation of hierarchy and nation states, written before the author’s falling out with Marx and organized communism (Disclaimer: The author was slightly racist, even for his time).
The Mars Triology is a sprawling three-novel scifi epic about the multigenerational colonization of Mars, featuring a rotating but interrelated ensemble cast who basically act as avatars for the various political tendencies they each represent. The author develops a “future history” of humanity, the complexity of which could go toe-to-toe with Tolkien, developing a wild pallette of libertarian, socialist, future-economist tendencies that fans out over several centuries and really gets the gears of your imagination clanking.
These are all selected as introductions to ideas. I have many more recommends but they’re less “dip your toes in”.
Wow thank you for the list! I will get reading.