"Anarchism is today the end which progress seeks to attain, and when it has attained it will look forward from there to the edge of a new horizon, which again as soon as it has been reached will disclose another, and so on always, since progress is eternal" - Louise Michel 1896

Anarchists advocate collective ownership and free access to the products of labour because it is the precondition for the freedom of the individual. As Malatesta explains, https://t.co/Zq7QuOzf8z

The consequence of this definition of freedom is that from an anarchist perspective having access to food, housing, healthcare etc not only expands well-being but makes people more free. After all, an individual lacks possibilities to act if they're starving, homeless or sick.

Goldman wrote that “true liberty . . . is not a negative thing of being free from something . . . Real freedom, true liberty is positive: it is freedom to something; it is the liberty to be, to do; in short, the liberty of actual and active opportunity”.

Berkman similarly thought that "freedom really means opportunity to satisfy your needs and wants. If your freedom does not give you that opportunity, then it does you no good. Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing".

What this means is that a person's freedom increases as the possible things they can actually do or be expands eg Malatesta writes that, "freedom is a hollow word unless it is wedded to ability, which is to say, to the means whereby one can freely carry on his own activity".

A hot take I often see is that anarchists are in favour of abstract individual freedom and ignore important materialist stuff like food, housing, healthcare etc. This ignores that lots of anarchists define freedom in terms of a person's real possibility to do and or to be.

I'm super dyslexic. After a short period of reading, the words just stop going into my head. I find reading mentally exhausting and routinely get annoyed about how little I can read. Reading theory is difficult for me but expanding my knowledge makes overcoming this worth it.

Reading and understanding socialist theory can be difficult. But the same is true about learning anything else eg physics, geography or how to bake bread. Experiencing difficulty is part of learning because you're acquiring new abilities which you did not have before.

"The State is not society, but one of its historical forms, at once brutish and abstract. Historically, it was born out of the marriage of violence, rapine and plunder - in other words of war and conquest" - Bakunin

"Anarchism is today the end which progress seeks to attain, and when it has attained it will look forward from there to the edge of a new horizon, which again as soon as it has been reached will disclose another, and so on always, since progress is eternal" - Louise Michel 1896

Nor is this a product of bad translations. When you compare bad old translations with the latest good translations the only substantial difference is him using the word "anarchy" more (a term he also uses in several different ways, even within the same text).

My life right now is just copying out every single definition of anarchism he ever gives and figuring out how to make them fit together in a coherent way. The evidence doesn't support obvious solutions like he changed his mind or used different definitions for different audiences

My main problem with Kropotkin is that he likes to use the same word to mean different things and switches between different senses of a word without telling you he's doing this. This can make figuring out what he thinks a nightmare.

A communist society is one in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle. As a result communism can't actually be achieved without the liberation of people of colour, women, queers and the disabled.

"The State is not society, but one of its historical forms, at once brutish and abstract. Historically, it was born out of the marriage of violence, rapine and plunder - in other words of war and conquest" - Bakunin

"Solidarity, that is the harmony of interests and of feelings, the coming together of individuals for the wellbeing of all, and of all for the wellbeing of each, is the only environment in which man can express his personality and achieve his optimum development" - Malatesta 1891

If you struggle with reading watch @RPlateaus explain Marx in clear and engaging bite sized chunks. https://t.co/CJFNZXIZV1

If you want to read the dark souls of Marx secondary literature see Istvan Meszaros, Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness, Volume II: The Dialectic of Structure and History. You don't need to read volume 1 to understand it and make sure to read the very long footnotes.