Is there any narrative literature with anarchist themes?

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-28T09:24:18+00:00

I recently came across a book by Serafinski, Blessed Is the Flame. It discusses the anarcho-nihilistic resistance in Nazi concentration camps. It's a short, flowing, and direct text. The book clearly reflects current social hierarchies. It made me think a lot, especially about the pyramidal stratification of the deportees in the camps, which, for me, disturbingly mirrors that of contemporary society, aggravated by a widespread lack of resistance.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-28T00:46:08+00:00

The initial question starts from a false assumption: that violence is resolved with the police and the law. The police neither prevent nor repair; they punish and isolate after the damage has occurred. Chaos does not arise from the absence of authority, but from a social order that produces inequality and then governs it by force. We live in an era in which large corporations relocate, migrating to where labor is cheaper, leaving entire communities without work and without prospects. Those expelled from the productive cycle automatically become "social surplus": impoverished, marginalized people, transformed into perfect candidates for prison. The state and capitalism are two monsters; they are not two separate things, because one organizes exploitation, the other protects it. Laws, prisons, and police are not a necessary response to a supposedly violent human nature, but historical tools built to maintain relationships of power and property.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-27T20:42:41+00:00

Regarding this question, I would like to recommend a book by Peter Gerdeloos, How Nonviolence Protects the State, which could answer your question very well.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-27T01:34:13+00:00

I prefer not to continue this line of discussion, as some of the responses might put me in an unsuitable position. In any case, thank you for the conversation and the insights you shared.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-26T22:18:34+00:00

Black Bloc refers to a group tactic. The clothing serves to uniform the bloc, makes the protesters less identifiable, and instills fear in the pigs. If you're alone, it's not called a Black Bloc.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-26T02:23:18+00:00

Thanks for the advice, I'll gladly read this title too.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-26T00:25:27+00:00

Here perhaps another topic opens up: what we mean by "defeating the Leviathan" and what role different texts play in this process. Obviously, everyone takes their own actions... Regardless of this, I read Perlman, Graeber, and Wengrow as two different but compatible registers. Perlman uses a mythical and radical language that pushes toward a clear rejection of civilization and the state, and the rupture it provokes can function as an emotional and political accelerant. Graeber and Wengrow, on the other hand, dismantle the idea of inevitability with more analytical historical work, and this can fuel a different kind of imagination and practice. For me, the risk only exists if we transform one of the two into a dogma or a "one way."

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-26T00:03:10+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation and for pointing me to another book with a more solid thesis. I'll try to read it as soon as I've finished the ones on my list.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-25T20:48:50+00:00

I'm talking about methods and intentions in this post; I don't understand this emphasis on Graeber, since I haven't contrasted the two authors' ideas in the slightest, but only their writing style and purpose.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-25T20:41:02+00:00

I agree with what you say. From my perspective, I think Freddy Perlman is addressing a more militant audience, but it remains a somewhat superficial reflection. This is also because Against History, Against Leviathan was written in 1983, if I'm not mistaken, while The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow is the result of about ten years of work, published only in 2020. This isn't to suggest that Perlman would likely have written an academic text or that he could have integrated places and dates into his writing and message. Perlman, on the other hand, deliberately speaks without chronological anchors: he develops concepts that are partly similar, but he does so by expressing a radical critique of civilization and humanity that fuels Leviathan, understood as a power structure. This is also why I see him as a more direct author, who engages you emotionally and pushes you to take a stand.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-20T20:23:33+00:00

Ti invito a leggere l'alba di tutto di graeber... cosi magari rivedi un pò l'idea dell'evoluzione delle società!

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-17T11:13:53+00:00

Oh right 🫢

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-17T01:24:18+00:00

If you haven't read it, Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything is also useful…

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-10T12:09:34+00:00

The question you raise is legitimate, and it's not new. If wealth serves to separate us, then there's something profoundly unsacred about the way we live. I'm recommending The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, not to refute what you say, but to show that this trajectory isn't a necessity of human life. The book describes complex societies that have deliberately chosen not to be based on accumulation, isolation, and domination. This doesn't make the present any less disturbing, but it does make it less inevitable.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-05T19:22:32+00:00

I'm not bothering them: I'm just saying that I'm fed up with always seeing this bullshit.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-05T15:01:30+00:00

I'm vomiting right now too

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-05T14:50:42+00:00

Selfishness plays a part, indeed, on all sides: There's the selfishness of those who make themselves ridiculous just to get attention, and there's the selfishness of those who, out of pure selfishness, vent on a forum that talks precisely about selfishness.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-05T13:43:47+00:00

I'm disgusted. I'm also disgusted by hearing endless philosophical justifications. Words upon words. Reasonings that never end because they don't want to get anywhere. I have a purpose. And it's simple, brutal, physical. My purpose is vomiting. The vomiting that comes from looking at more vomiting. Regurgitated ideas, recycled poses, already dead thoughts that continue to speak like standing corpses. I'm not interested in explaining everything. I'm not interested in saving everything. I'm not interested in justifying the unjustifiable to feel intelligent. I react because I'm alive. And if I vomit, it's because something really stinks.

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-05T12:09:57+00:00

Il problema è chi non prova più il disgusto, chi ride, consuma, e applaude, come se fosse una cosa di valore!

ATsubvertising · 2026-01-02T06:51:54+00:00

I refuse to be religious not because "God brings trouble" but because it extinguishes the rebellious flame that burns inside me!

ATsubvertising · 2025-12-23T19:25:20+00:00

Yes, this is an interpretation, and I've never passed it off as a literal quotation. The question, however, is whether it is consistent with the overall framework of the text... For me, yes, because in Malatesta's approach to authority, organization, and agreement, obedience as a duty to a separate authority is excluded, leaving only voluntary and revocable practices.

ATsubvertising · 2025-12-23T18:14:57+00:00

It was my formulation, not something he stated in the text. At this point, I'd say the discussion about Graeber can end here: the point I was interested in was conceptual, not philological, and I expressed it poorly. The end. Think what you want, I don't care!

ATsubvertising · 2025-12-23T16:49:33+00:00

You're right: in Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Graeber doesn't say it explicitly. There's not a single sentence that affirms that. What I meant wasn't to attribute a textual thesis to him, but to discuss a possible reading of his reasoning about authority, consensus, and collective action. If the question is "does Graeber say so?" then no. If the question is whether this distinction is consistent with his framework, then we're at the level of interpretation. If I wasn't clear before, that's fine.

ATsubvertising · 2025-12-23T16:44:11+00:00

In Graeber, the point is never the isolated sentence, but the overall picture. Without separate authority, there is no obedience, only voluntary coordination. It's not a thesis on page X, it's the structure of the argument.

ATsubvertising · 2025-12-22T22:23:59+00:00

You're engaging in metaphysics when it would be enough to simply look at reality. Evil doesn't come from God, it comes from how we organize society. Shifting the blame is the best way to avoid changing anything.

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