Super cool stuff. I like how you suggest a book written by a man whose Wikipedia page, under “Controversial positions” describes him as anti-feminist, antisemitic, and proto-fascist. No one having a good faith discussion throws out a reading assignment while making not one single argument or quote from the book. And to then insult people for not reading it (or rather, not having already read it) is really telling. You dont care what people think, so long as they shut up and leave.

I’ve skimmed the book before and I wasnt shocked to be in disagreement with many of his points. He wasn’t a committed anarchist his whole life, and even notions like “property is theft” are circularly incoherent. You can’t steal something that isn’t already recognized as owned by someone else. At the very minimum, a being has complete autonomy of their own body, so again, hardly surprising that a committed misogynist thought bodies were communal property.

Why do we care what a famously obtuse old proto-fascist has to say about contemporary anarchism again? Oh right, because this whole tirade is to deflect from the main topic with ragebait and probably some crypto-fascist propaganda move.

I can reccomend books you won’t read too. In “The Commune Form,” Kristin Ross makes many interesting observations about the formation of communes and their foundational role in all forms of left-wing revolution. From the intro:

My goal in these brief reflections is not to provide a definition of a form that in its contingency, lack of abstraction, and ongoing, unfinished nature could hardly lend itself to such a task. The commune form, as form, does not lend itself to a static definition, unalterable through time; it does not unfold in the same way everywhere around the world. It is not a concept.

Throughout the book (which is also available online) she makes similar cases and discussions: that the commune form (and anarchism itself) are specific instantiations of common practices. Just like a pirate ship is a floating laboratory for democracy, just like every Fediverse instance is an experiment in governance.

I’ll be frank, you really piss me off. I find that smug, patronizing “I sip my coffee while moderating the children” tone of voice to be such an immediate indicator of a person who let’s the petty tyranny of forum moderation go straight to their head. See also, demanding an entire other instance of people read some book in order to satisfy your demands for ideological purity. You sound like the worst kind of condescending reddit mod, a tiny authoritarian loftily demanding the peasants get on your intellectual level. “Read my dense ideological treatise,” says the “teflon man” who doesn’t let ideology stick to them.

Go fuck yourself.