Shtakser reviewed Immigrants against the state by Kenyon Zimmer (The working class in American history)
Review of 'Immigrants against the state' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
An excellent book. The author concentrated on two communities prominent within US anarchism - the East European Jewish and the Italian. The main point of the book is to show how in US the anarchist movement combined mutual support within particular immigrant groups and an anti-racist, internationalist stance. The author did a great job describing the anarchists' standing against the authoritarian tendencies prominent in the 20th century and positioning a belief in human beings as an alternative to closure of borders, whether of states or of communities.
The author describes the demise of these particular anarchist communities as a result of curtailing of immigration to US, which meant that the particular combination of ethnicity and radical politics on which these were based disappeared with the first generation of immigrants. He also points out that the WWII created a polarized reality in which resistance to both Nazi and Communist authoritarian regimes …
An excellent book. The author concentrated on two communities prominent within US anarchism - the East European Jewish and the Italian. The main point of the book is to show how in US the anarchist movement combined mutual support within particular immigrant groups and an anti-racist, internationalist stance. The author did a great job describing the anarchists' standing against the authoritarian tendencies prominent in the 20th century and positioning a belief in human beings as an alternative to closure of borders, whether of states or of communities.
The author describes the demise of these particular anarchist communities as a result of curtailing of immigration to US, which meant that the particular combination of ethnicity and radical politics on which these were based disappeared with the first generation of immigrants. He also points out that the WWII created a polarized reality in which resistance to both Nazi and Communist authoritarian regimes seemed irrelevant. This reality was sustained during the Cold War, when a struggle for freedom for everyone and everywhere was replaced in the public mind by struggle between political regimes.
The book is highly internationalist in approach. The author managed to describe the experience of anarchists, as people living in a world where the events in Russia, Mexico, or Spain are directly relevant to their lives. He also describes them as highly mobile and highly committed to their ideas. The book includes stories on US anarchists in Mexico, Soviet Russia, and Spain, and the author seems to care about them as much as their comrades did.
Perhaps the most convincing story addressing the demise of anarchism as not permanent is the one about a prominent US anarchist traveling to Lodz after the war and encountering several Jewish anarchist survivors, who asked for nothing for themselves, but wished to renew their international contacts and asked for technical assistance in publishing their ideas locally. It is hard not to think that such ideas have power.