"Journal of a Dissenter," 1996-2024
Probably unwisely, I've posted my lifelong "intellectual journal" online, here . It's a very long document that no one could or would...
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Wright's Writing
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May 18, 20239 min
Love of freedom defines the political left, not the right
[This article was published at Sublation and other venues.] Political discourse in the United States consists largely of lies and...
Jun 13, 202230 min
Origins of the European state system
Reading Charles Tilly’s classic Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (1992). Taking notes on it for myself, but also for...
Jun 10, 202122 min
Introduction to my forthcoming book
If all goes well, I'll be publishing a book sometime in the not-too-distant future. It'll be called something like Popular Radicalism and...
Apr 19, 202114 min
Review of "The Young Lords," by Johanna Fernández
[This academic review was posted at H-Net.] Johanna Fernández’s The Young Lords: A Radical History could hardly have been published at a...
Mar 4, 20219 min
Personal reflections on anarchism
Anarchism (anti-authoritarianism, love of freedom) is an essential thing, an essential guide for our thinking and action, but I have to...
Aug 29, 20203 min
"Government in the Future"
[From 2008.] Reading Chomsky’s pamphlet Government in the Future, which sets out to answer the question “What is the role of the state in...
Aug 24, 202025 min
Why I am not a Leninist (nor an anarchist)
Years later, I still reproach myself for self-publishing my book on cooperatives, because that ensured it would have a limited...
Aug 17, 20207 min
Fragments on Marxism and anarchism
Grad student notes from 2010.— One of the advantages of Marx’s equation of progress with the expansion of productive capacity is that it...
Jun 12, 20204 min
Student notes on "Poor People's Movements"
[Maybe it's self-indulgent of me to keep posting old notes from my student years, but just in case anyone out there gives a shit, I guess...
Dec 13, 20185 min
100 (more or less) left-wing books
Here's a list of some good leftist books I've come across over the years. Click on the titles for the PDFs. It's a somewhat arbitrary...
Mar 11, 20189 min
Collectivism
[Excerpts from this book.] Collectivism comes in both noble and evil forms. In the former, the principle of the individual is paramount;...
Jul 27, 201610 min
Climate change, capitalism, and state violence
In an age when the State is daily demonstrating its willingness, or rather its extraordinary eagerness, to brutally repress dissent and...
Jan 29, 201613 min
Intellectual origins of American radicalism
Staughton Lynd's Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism (1968) is a fantastic exploration of the ideological offshoots and effects...
Jan 5, 20163 min
"The Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
[Notes from my journal.] I'm reading Paulo Freire’s famous little book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), which is apparently...
Sep 30, 20153 min
Notes on anarchism
[Old notes from my journal. See also this post.] Reading parts of a collection of essays published in 1978 called Anarchism, edited by J....
Sep 19, 20153 min
A 25-year-old's love affair
[From an old journal entry.] Noam Chomsky is my intellectual conscience. I think about him every day, multiple times a day. He helps...
Sep 13, 20154 min
Saving Marxism from Lenin
[This is an excerpt from Notes of an Underground Humanist.] You should read Peter Kropotkin’s essay “The State: Its Historic Role.”...
Apr 11, 20155 min
The fraudulence of status
[The following is an excerpt from this book.] In order to determine someone’s intellectual or artistic integrity and acuity, a simple...
Sep 27, 20143 min
Radical human nature
The power of indoctrination is shown by the fact that most people don’t consider themselves radical leftists, socialists, or anarchists....
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