A review by aeudaimonia
What Is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman

informative slow-paced

2.0

I listened to the audiobook, which I normally don't do; maybe I'd think differently if I'd read it with my own two eyes. With that said, it's really not what I was looking for. I guess I had hoped for a real philosophical and scholarly treatment of communist anarchism (although maybe that would be too much for just an introduction). Berkman makes several sweeping and vaguely essentialist claims about human nature that I don't disagree with per se, but certainly wouldn't say with my full chest. And he frames these claims as appeals to "common sense" and "universal desires" so often that (especially in the earlier chapters) it came off as demagoguery. Berkman also approaches history through a progressivist lens that I always find really yucky and dangerous for a variety of reasons. Even though I'm sympathetic to and interested in communist anarchism, I don't vibe with the author's underlying ideological commitments to such an extent that they kind of ruined the whole book for me. Berkman's analysis of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevists however was always interesting whenever relevant and a welcome break from the rest of the book.