(this article co-written with Jay Driskell)
Note: This piece was originally written in 1997, before Seattle and the re-emergence of a radical grassroots international movement explicitly opposed to capitalism, at a time when anarchist and anticapitalist perspectives were still marginal within the movement against “globalization.” We’re reprinting it now because we think the ideas it contains still have some work to do.
With the recent wave of successes in the struggle against corporate control of our lives, many activists are beginning to assess the long-term goals of our efforts and the fundamental …

(This is an abridged version of the workshop I gave at the NASCO conference on cooperatives in Ann Arbor each November from 1997 to 2003. As I pointed out to the audience beforehand, my take on anarchism is a partisan one; there’s nothing “objective” about it, and many other anarchists would disagree with my presentation. I mean it to spark discussion, not provide final answers.)
Peter Staudenmaier,
Ofek Shalom Co-op, Rainbow Bookstore Co-op, Madison Community Co-op
Anybody who tries to talk politics within the cooperative movement realizes one thing pretty quickly: …

(This article originally appeared in the North American Green journal Synthesis / Regeneration in 1997.)
At the beginning of the decade the German Green Party was on the verge of collapse. Torn throughout the 1980’s by bitter internal struggles over basic questions of political direction, the party was entirely unprepared for the tumultuous events of 1990-91: German re-unification and the Gulf war. In the first elections of the newly “united” Federal Republic in December 1990, the Greens fared miserably, failing to garner the 5% of the popular vote needed for representation …