Libertarian Book Club and League

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Libertarian League
AbbreviationLL
Predecessor Vanguard Group
Formation1945;79 years ago (1945)
(Libertarian Book Club)
1954;70 years ago (1954)
(Libertarian League)
Founders Sam Dolgoff
Esther Dolgoff
Russell Blackwell
Dissolved1965;59 years ago (1965)
Purpose Libertarian socialism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Location
Main organ
Views and Comments

The Libertarian Book Club and Libertarian League were two postwar anarchist groups in New York City associated with Sam and Esther Dolgoff.

Contents

Libertarian Book Club

The Libertarian Book Club was an anarchist circle in postwar New York City. Established by Sam and Esther Dolgoff in 1945 at the behest of Grigorii Maksimov, the group held monthly discussion fora and social events in a rented Workmen's Circle room and served as a social center for a small, aging group of immigrant radicals whom the Dolgoffs knew from their work on Road to Freedom and Vanguard . [1] Sicilian-born anarchist Valerio Isca was one of the co-founders. [2]

The Libertarian Book Club published multiple volumes and distributed domestically other major books and international publications from the anarchist movement. [1] The publisher reprinted Steven T. Byington's English translation of Paul Eltzbacher's Anarchism in 1960. [3]

Libertarian League

In 1954, the Dolgoffs and anarchist Russell Blackwell formed the Libertarian League to supplement the Book Club. [4] In their founding statement, titled "What We Stand For", the League suggested an alternative to the bipolar Cold War: a libertarian socialist society with a worldwide federation of free communities, cooperatives, and workers' councils. Sam Dolgoff described their aims as anarcho-syndicalist society with anarcho-communist sympathies.The League hosted weekly political discussions and published Views and Comments. [5]

Only a few members joined the league at first and though others cycled in and out, attendance at group meetings rarely went above a dozen. Notably, core members of the group were librarians and printers, decidedly more professionalized than the industrial unionism for which they advocated. [5]

Views and Comments began as a mimeographed newsletter and became a monthly journal between 20 and 40 pages. [6] Its aesthetic predated that of the 1980s zines. Contributors were commonly anonymous or used pseudonyms, given fears stemming from McCarthyism. [7]

The League dissolved in mid-1965. [8]

Related Research Articles

Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anarcho-capitalism</span> Political philosophy and economic theory

Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. An anarcho-capitalist philosophy extends the concept of ownership to include control of private property as part of the self, and, in some cases, control of other people as private property. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market, which they describe as a voluntary society involving the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society a system of private property would still exist, and would be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies that were selected by property owners, whose ownership rights or claims would be enforced by private defence agencies and/or insurance companies. These agencies or companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police, similar to a state apparatus. Some anarcho-capitalist authors have argued that slavery is compatible with anarcho-capitalist ideals.

Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Although usually contrasted with social anarchism, both individualist and social anarchism have influenced each other. Some anarcho-capitalists claim anarcho-capitalism is part of the individualist anarchist tradition, while others disagree and claim individualist anarchism is only part of the socialist movement and part of the libertarian socialist tradition. Economically, while European individualist anarchists are pluralists who advocate anarchism without adjectives and synthesis anarchism, ranging from anarcho-communist to mutualist economic types, most American individualist anarchists of the 19th century advocated mutualism, a libertarian socialist form of market socialism, or a free-market socialist form of classical economics. Individualist anarchists are opposed to property that violates the entitlement theory of justice, that is, gives privilege due to unjust acquisition or exchange, and thus is exploitative, seeking to "destroy the tyranny of capital,—that is, of property" by mutual credit.

Anarchist communism is a political ideology 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".

Anarcho-pacifism, also referred to as anarchist pacifism and pacifist anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates for the use of peaceful, non-violent forms of resistance in the struggle for social change. Anarcho-pacifism rejects the principle of violence which is seen as a form of power and therefore as contradictory to key anarchist ideals such as the rejection of hierarchy and dominance. Many anarcho-pacifists are also Christian anarchists, who reject war and the use of violence.

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

The nature of capitalism is criticized by left-wing anarchists, who reject hierarchy and advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. Anarchism is generally defined as the libertarian philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authoritarianism, illegitimate authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Capitalism is generally considered by scholars to be an economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor, which have generally been opposed by most anarchists historically. Since capitalism is variously defined by sources and there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category, the designation is applied to a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.

<i>Anarcho-Syndicalist Review</i> American anarchist magazine

Anarcho-Syndicalist Review is an American anarchist magazine published multiple times per year that focuses on anarcho-syndicalist theory and practice. It is headquartered in Philadelphia.

Anarchism in the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that places a strong emphasis on the value of liberty. Libertarians advocate for the expansion of individual autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing the principles of equality before the law and the protection of civil rights, including the rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice. Libertarians often oppose 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 have identified distinct libertarian perspectives on the nature of property and capital, typically delineating them along left–right or socialist–capitalist axes. The various schools of libertarian thought have also been shaped by liberal ideas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libertarianism in the United States</span> Origin, history and development of libertarianism in the United States

In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value; the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and the libertarianism associated with the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.

Right-libertarianism, also known as libertarian capitalism, or right-wing libertarianism, is a libertarian political philosophy that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property. The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital from left-libertarianism, a variant of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an anti-authoritarian approach to property and income. In contrast to socialist libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism. Like most forms of libertarianism, it supports civil liberties, especially natural law, negative rights, the non-aggression principle, and a significant transformation of the modern welfare state. Practitioners of Right-libertarianism usually do not self-describe by that term and often object to it.

Anarchism in Russia developed out of the populist and nihilist movements' dissatisfaction with the government reforms of the time.

Anarchism as a social movement in Cuba held great influence with the working classes during the 19th and early 20th century. The movement was particularly strong following the abolition of slavery in 1886, until it was repressed first in 1925 by President Gerardo Machado, and more thoroughly by Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government following the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s. Cuban anarchism mainly took the form of anarcho-collectivism based on the works of Mikhail Bakunin and, later, anarcho-syndicalism. The Latin American labor movement, and by extension the Cuban labor movement, was at first more influenced by anarchism than Marxism.

The Vanguard Group was an anarchist political group active during the 1930s, which published the periodical Vanguard: Journal of Libertarian Communism, led by Sam Dolgoff. Vanguard was for a time, during the 1930s, the leading English-language anarchist youth organization in New York City.

Contemporary anarchism within the history of anarchism is the period of the anarchist movement continuing from the end of World War II and into the present. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in anti-globalisation, peace, squatter and student protest movements. Anarchists have participated in armed revolutions such as in those that created the Makhnovshchina and Revolutionary Catalonia, and anarchist political organizations such as the International Workers' Association and the Industrial Workers of the World have existed since the 20th century. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.

Anarchism and libertarianism, as broad political ideologies with manifold historical and contemporary meanings, have contested definitions. Their adherents have a pluralistic and overlapping tradition that makes precise definition of the political ideology difficult or impossible, compounded by a lack of common features, differing priorities of subgroups, lack of academic acceptance, and contentious historical usage.

Abraham Bluestein (1909–1997) was an American anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.

Russell Blackwell was an American anarchist and former communist.

References

  1. 1 2 Cornell 2016, p. 215.
  2. Berman, Paul (September 25, 1996). "The Last of the Anarchists". Slate Magazine. Retrieved September 12, 2024. In 1945, Isca helped found the Libertarian Book Club, which for the last half-century has been the most stable of the anarchist organizations in New York...
  3. Weir, David (1997). Anarchy & Culture: The Aesthetic Politics of Modernism. University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 270–271. ISBN   978-1-55849-084-0.
  4. Cornell 2016, pp. 215–216.
  5. 1 2 Cornell 2016, p. 216.
  6. Cornell 2016, pp. 216–217.
  7. Cornell 2016, p.  217.
  8. Cornell 2016, p. 232.

Bibliography

Further reading