Libcom.org

Last updated
libcom.org
Logo of libcom.org.svg
Libcom screenshot April 2021.jpg
Type of site
Anarchist website
Available inEnglish, with some non-English content
URL libcom.org
Launched26 September 2003;20 years ago (26 September 2003) [1]
Current statusOnline
Content licence
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 [2]

libcom.org is an online platform featuring a variety of libertarian communist essays, blog posts, and archives, primarily in English. It was founded in 2005 by editors in the United States and the United Kingdom. Libcom.org also has a forum and social media features including the ability to comment on post and upload original articles. [3] In contrast with traditional archives, anarchistic archival practices embrace "use as preservation", making use of digital technology to host niche political material in online repositories like Libcom.org. [4]

Contents

The site was launched in 2003 originally as enrager.net, named for the enragés of the French Revolution, but changed its name in 2005 to the present name libcom.org, short for libertarian communism. [1] The enrager.net web collective was a splinter of the London group inside the Anarchist Youth Network, an organization founded in 2002 by two members of the Anarchist Federation. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

Anarchist communism, also known as anarcho-communism, communist anarchism, or libertarian communism. is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retention of personal property and collectively-owned items, goods, and services. It supports social ownership of property and the distribution of resources "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Freedom is a London-based anarchist website and biannual journal published by Freedom Press which was formerly either a monthly, a fortnightly or a weekly newspaper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freedom Press</span> Anarchist publishing house in London, England

Freedom Press is an anarchist publishing house and bookseller in Whitechapel, London, United Kingdom, founded in 1886.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crypto-anarchism</span> Political ideology

Crypto-anarchism or cyberanarchism is a political ideology focusing on protection of privacy, political freedom, and economic freedom, the adherents of which use cryptographic software for confidentiality and security while sending and receiving information over computer networks. In his 1988 "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto", Timothy C. May introduced the basic principles of crypto-anarchism, encrypted exchanges ensuring total anonymity, total freedom of speech, and total freedom to trade. In 1992, he read the text at the founding meeting of the cypherpunk movement.

Individualist feminism, also known as ifeminism, is a libertarian feminist movement that emphasizes individualism, personal autonomy, freedom from state-sanctioned discrimination against women, and gender equality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friendster</span> Social gaming site

Friendster was a social network game based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003. Later, the company became a social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Before Friendster was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website was also used for dating and discovering new events, bands and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages, and comments with other members via profiles and networks. It is considered one of the original social networks.

Sam Dolgoff was an anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist from Russia who grew up, lived and was active in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Pincus</span> American Internet entrepreneur

Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josiah Warren</span> American philosopher, inventor, musician, and author (1798–1874)

Josiah Warren was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like James J. Martin and Peter Marshall among others as the first American anarchist and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, the first anarchist periodical published, was an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's encroachment on and violations of individual liberties; emphasizing the rule of law, pluralism, cosmopolitanism, cooperation, civil and political rights, bodily autonomy, freedom of association, free trade, freedom of expression, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, individualism, and voluntary association. Libertarians are often skeptical of or opposed to authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of Libertarianism. Scholars distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines. Libertarians of various schools were influenced by liberal ideas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communization</span> Term describing mixing of radical anarchist and ultra-left tendencies

Communization theory refers to a tendency on the ultra-left that understands communism as a process that, in a social revolution, immediately begins to replace all capitalist social relations with communist ones. Thus it rejects the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which it sees as reproducing capitalism. There exist two broad trends within communization theory: a ‘Marxist’ one and an ‘anarchist’ one.

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism, known as anarchists, advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. While anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, opposition to the state is not its central or sole definition. Anarchism can entail opposing authority or hierarchy in the conduct of all human relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anarchism in Australia</span> Australian anarchism

Anarchism in Australia arrived within a few years of anarchism developing as a distinct tendency in the wake of the 1871 Paris Commune. Although a minor school of thought and politics, composed primarily of campaigners and intellectuals, Australian anarchism has formed a significant current throughout the history and literature of the colonies and nation. Anarchism's influence has been industrial and cultural, though its influence has waned from its high point in the early 20th century where anarchist techniques and ideas deeply influenced the official Australian union movement. In the mid 20th century anarchism's influence was primarily restricted to urban bohemian cultural movements. In the late 20th century and early 21st century Australian anarchism has been an element in Australia's social justice and protest movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Hastie Bell</span> British anarchist

Thomas Hastie Bell (1867–1942) was a Scottish anarchist. He was born in Edinburgh in 1867.

The Spunk Library was an anarchist Internet archive. The name "spunk" was chosen for the term's meaning in Swedish, English, and Australian, summarized by the website as "nondescript, energetic, courageous and attractive".

Magonism is an anarchist, or more precisely anarcho-communist, school of thought precursor of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. It is mainly based on the ideas of Ricardo Flores Magón, his brothers Enrique and Jesús, and also other collaborators of the Mexican newspaper Regeneración, as Práxedis Guerrero, Librado Rivera and Anselmo L. Figueroa.

Anarchism emerged on territories of Serbia in the second half of the 19th century as part of the wider workers' movement in the Southern Slavic and future Yugoslavian region, and was embraced along with other freedom-centered ideas as part of the struggle for national liberation from Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Among the first people to espouse ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was Živojin Žujović, who was at the time a student of law and economy, later credited as the first Serbian socialist. A sizeable community of South Slavic students and revolutionaries was based in Switzerland, where they kept in touch with Mikhail Bakunin and the Slavic section of Jura Federation.

Anarchism in Croatia first emerged in the late 19th century within the socialist workers' movement. Anarchist tendencies subsequently spread from neighboring countries, taking root in a number of cities throughout the country. The movement experienced repression from a succession of authoritarian regimes before finally reemerging around the time of the independence of Croatia.

Wildcat was a monthly anarchist-libertarian newspaper published from London between 1974 and 1975. Wildcat is not connected to the communist newsletter and journal of the same name published in the 1980s and 1990s.

References

  1. 1 2 "libcom.org: 10 years of class struggle online". libcom.org. September 26, 2013. Archived from the original on 14 April 2021. Retrieved 2021-03-28. Today, Thursday, 26 September 2013, libcom.org turns 10. In this blog post we look back at the evolution of the site over the last decade, pick out some highlights and look to the future. libcom.org, originally named enrager.net, was officially launched on 26 September 2003 as an "anti-authoritarian resource and community". Since then, we believe it has grown to be the world's most popular English-language anarchist/libertarian socialist website, with over 15,000 texts, over 6000 contributing users and which has been viewed over 15 million times by over 10 million unique visitors.
  2. "legal notes". libcom.org. Archived from the original on 2021-04-11. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  3. Croeser, Sky (2018). "Rethinking networked solidarity". In Mortensen, Mette; Neumayer, Christina; Poell, Thomas (eds.). Social Media Materialities and Protest: Critical Reflections. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 28–41. ISBN   978-1-138-09306-5. OCLC   1012345327.
  4. Cornell, Andrew (2019). "Archival Parties and Parties to the Archive: Creating and Recovering Anarchist Resistance Culture at the Interference Archive". American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism. 29 (1): 21–25. ISSN   1548-4238.
  5. Johns, Steven. "The Anarchist Youth Network (AYN), personal recollections, 2002-2004". libcom.org. Archived from the original on 2022-03-08. Retrieved 2022-03-08.