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I picked this up when everyone on my Instagram feed was recommending White Fragility, a book by a white woman who spent two decades making her living by talking about diversity to corporate audiences.

It was really interesting reading Fanon alongside Black Against Empire, a book about the Black Panther Party which I've yet to finish (but will pick up again now that I'm down to reading 4 books at once--eep). The Wretched of the Earth apparently influenced the Panthers to a large degree, and it's easy to see why in sections like "On Violence" and "The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness." I remember reading about founding members of the Panthers considering Black Americans to be a colonized nation within the so-called United States, which allowed them to adapt Fanon's discussion of Algerians finding their way in battling the French colonizers to their own confrontations with the American State.

But Fanon's relevance as a revolutionary Marxist, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist thinker extends beyond the 60s counterculture, right up to today. Fanon writes that "The colonized world is a world divided in two. The dividing line, the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations" within the first three pages--this was playing out a few streets over, night after night, as uprisings were cut off and nearly kettled in wealthier neighborhoods by a youthful, racially-diverse crowd led by Black activists. And yet, as spokespeople arose, Fanon would be there to warn that "Those [colonizer] values which seemed to ennoble the soul prove worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged. And first among them is individualism. The colonized intellectual learned from his masters that the individual must assert himself...wealth lies in thought. But the colonized intellectual who is lucky enough to bunker down with the people during the liberation struggle, will soon discover the falsity of this theory. Involvement in the organization of the struggle will already introduce him to a different vocabulary. 'Brother,' 'sister,' 'comrade' are words outlawed by the colonialist bourgeoisie because in their thinking my brother is my wallet and my comrade, my scheming." A powerful lesson for NGO advocates or ambitious activists hoping to go pro, and one my generation--particularly hung up on optics--would do well to learn.

As uprisings continued, I saw Fanon's discussion of the colonized revolutionary having "nothing to lose and everything to gain" echoed in video of a woman saying that her neighbors were not "destroying [their] city" because they weren't allowed to own any of it. Saw the "colonialist bourgeoisie" introduce " a creation of the colonial situation: nonviolence" and "The very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now [deciding] to express themselves with force."

It seemed oddly prescient that when I picked the book up again, in early 2021, I was reading that "In fact, any national liberation movement should give this lumpenproletariat maximum attention. It will always respond to the call to revolt, but if the insurrection thinks it can afford to ignore it, then this famished underclass will pitch itself into the armed struggle and take part in the conflict, this time on the side of the oppressor." How could Fanon have foretold a bunch of boat owning Trumpers taking private jets to the Capitol to storm the doors, suddenly fighting The Blue they supposedly Backed?

"National unity crumbles, the insurrection is at a crucial turning point. The political education of the masses is now recognized as an historical necessity," Fanon writes later. And educate us he does. "...hatred is not an agenda," he writes on the next page, "It would be perverse to count on the enemy who always manages to commit as many crimes as possible and can be relied upon to widen 'the rift,' thus driving the population as a whole to revolt. Whatever the case, we have already indicated that the enemy endeavors to win over certain segments of the population...During the struggle the colonists and the police force are instructed to modify their behavior and 'become more human.'" Paint "Black Lives Matter" on a crosswalk. Encourage the cops to take pictures with the protesters. Joe Biden has been elected. What you've seen is "not who we are." We are ready to heal; to come together. We rocket towards 500,000 dead in a pandemic. Bars can now stay open late!

Fanon gives us warnings: "The objectives of the struggle must not remain as loosely defined as they were in the early days. If we are not careful there is the constant risk that the people will ask why continue the war, every time the enemy makes the slightest concession...the occupier can easily phase out the violent aspects of his presence."

Ultimately, though, he also gives us hope. "Our greatest task is to constantly understand what is happening in our own countries. We must not cultivate the spirit of the exceptional or look for the hero, another form of leader. We must elevate the people, expand their minds, equip them, differentiate them, and humanize them...It is as "Césaire said: 'To invent the souls of men.' To politicize the masses is not and cannot be to make a political speech. It means driving home to the masses that everything depends on them..."

It sounds like a tall order, and it is. It's challenging. It's why a book by a white diversity trainer who asks descendants of colonizers to look inward and study their thoughts and feelings (which isn't a bad thing to do in itself!) in order to facilitate corporate synergy is celebrated in the media, and Fanon is relegated to the past, the Panthers a footnote in mainstream reviews of the 60s counterculture.

But the lessons here are concrete. They are necessary, and laid out unflinchingly. Most of all, they can be studied and learned by anyone. As Fanon assures us "You can explain anything to the people provided you really want them to understand." I owe him a great deal for his explanation.

Up there with The State and Revolution by Lenin as a pretty masterful refutation of opportunist (and what we might call today "radlib") attempts to co-opt the socialist project and Marxist theory specifically.

The ideas in this pamphlet are as important today as they were in Luxemburg's for clarifying intent and defending the movement from distractions that masquerade as critical additions or edits to certain fundamental ideas in the Marxist traditio.

For example, Luxemburg writes of Bernstein (the opportunist who is the focus of Reform or Revolution, just as Kautsky was for Lenin's State and Revolution):

"To him, ‘capitalist’ is not an economic unit but a fiscal unit. And ‘capital’ is for him not a factor of production but simply a certain quantity of money.

Here too, the theoretic base of his economic error is his “popularisation” of socialism. For this is what he does. By transporting the concept of capitalism from its productive relations to property relations, and by speaking of simple individuals instead of speaking of entrepreneurs, he moves the question of socialism from the domain of production into the domain of relations of fortune – that is, from the relation between Capital and Labour to the relation between poor and rich.”

This reminds me of leftist subculture among folks on Twitter, Instagram, etc, who think "capitalists" are anyone who makes $5k more than them per year, and are unable to frame their analysis in a way that encourages any specific action that might work towards the communism ("socialism," "anarchism," et al) they claim to desire for the nation and the world.

Luxemburg also writes about co-ops and unions, methods by which some non-Marxists purport to "build a new world in the shell of the old," that “The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.”

In other words, just like an amount of monetary income or savings doesn’t automatically reveal class distinctions, changing the “capitalist mode of distribution” does not challenge the “capitalist mode of production” or capitalism writ large.

While these concepts may be more conceptually complex than common leftist slogans, Luxemburg's analysis can be understood through her explanations, which are reinforced by repetition (though not ad nauseum).

If I had to sum up the book in one quote, it might be "And no law in the world can give to the proletariat the means of production while it remains in the framework of bourgeois society, for not laws but economic development have torn the means of production from the producers’ possession." Anyone familiar with the slightly more well-known leftist Lucy Parsons will recognize an analog between this statement and “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.” But while anarchists will engage with this side of the equation (reform), they tend to withold criticism of the other (revolution). Luxemburg doesn't shy away from this.

Her goal is not just to repel opportunists who would seek to "work within the system," but also to disabuse folks of the idea that a "new world" can be built as a dual power challenge to the existing order at any given moment in any given place. Instead, she gives a nuanced analysis of quotes by Engels and Marx taken out of context by Bernstein for his own purposes, pointing out how one quote by Engels about "abandoning the barricades" was referencing contemporary, daily struggle under capitalism, and how a quote by Marx about "buying the estates of the landlords" was invoked as a theory for a post-revolution dictatorship of the proletariat.

In other words, she couches their quotes within the context of their theory, rather than attacking or using their words to her own ends. Reform or Revolution is, really, about reform and revolution--how the former can and should be used, but only in service to the latter.

Kautsky Kautsky KAUTSKY!

This proved to be an incredibly useful read for me, defining (in Lenin's terms, of course) key concepts in Marxist theory such as "opportunist" socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the bourgeois state, and (you guessed it) revolution in about 1/10th as many pages as English editions of Das Kapital Vol. 1 (I'll get to it, I swear).

Why are socialists often categorized as "revolutionary"- or "reform"-minded? Or, worse, counter-revolutionary? Why are (some of) the anarchists at odds with (some of) the Marxists? How does a state wither away? How dope was the Paris Commune? Why is Kautsky such a simp for the bourgeoise?? Ol' Lenny's got the scoop, and he's bringing it to you in plainer language than you'd expect for the early 20th century, frankly.

My only real complaint is that Lenin is pretty keen on repeating himself at various points. But given that he is restating points plainly (kudos to the translators), and with the aim of illuminating passages from Marx and Engels, I suppose it is somewhat warranted.

The Todd Chretien introduction to this edition is worth reading. While I typically skim introductions to historically important works, the historical information and outline of the following chapters led me to more careful (and less frustrated) reading.

I would recommend this to any socialist really, even my anarchist comrades. While Lenin is critical of "the anarchists" generally, it's clear he has more affinity for those that share his end goal of a stateless, classless society, than those (like the Social Democrats) who he believes claim that as the ultimate desire while actively working against achieving it. He does accuse Kropotkin and a few others, who ended up signing a particular pro-war statement, of hypocrisy, but by and large he simply disagrees with the concept of smashing the state and neglecting to build a temporary worker's state in its stead (not the shared anarchist goal of smashing the currently-existing bourgeois state).

The other useful thing about this edition are the series of short biographies of other leftists mentioned in the text, which appear at the end of this volume. Both because they help in understanding Lenin's references, and because you get to see how many bad-ass radicals did cool shit only to get executed by Stalin when he consolidated power.

I'd been meaning to read this for quite a while, and when I saw that Audible Anarchism had an audiobook version, I figured I'd start that way. I ended up tearing through it (with the occasional backtracking to ensure decent absorption/comprehension) and it was really enjoyable.

If you've read Homage to Catalonia, this is an even more interesting read, as Rocker was commenting on the situation in Spain as it unfolded. Of course, it's a bit sad to encounter Rocker's high hopes for the CNT-FAI fending off Franco's forces in hindsight.

In any case, it's the strongest piece of theory in support of anarchism I've yet come across. Unlike works I've read penned by Bakunin, Goldman, Parsons, etc, this relies less on firey ideological rhetoric, and grounds itself instead in a history of anarcho-syndicalist movements and orgaizations while focusing on the tendency's particularities within the socialist traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries. It recalls Kropotkin in its push towards providing a path forward, but is obviously more recent than, say, Conquest of Bread.