The Relevance of Anarchism To Modern Society : Sam Dolgoff

Description

Scarce pamphlet on Anarchism by Sam Dolgoff published by Soil of Liberty Press.

 

Dolgoff, Sam. The Relevance of Anarchism To Modern Society. Soil Of Liberty. Minneapolis, Minnesota. 2nd edition, September 1979.

 

The very technology that has opened new roads to freedom has also armed states with unimaginably frightful weapons which could annihilate humanity

–Sam Dolgoff, 1971

Scarce second edition of the revolutionary tract by Sam Dolgoff on the future of modern anarchism predicting the rise and impact of automation and artificial intelligence.

After leaving the Russian empire for New York with his family in 1905, Dolgoff (born Sholem Dolgopolsky) was a house painter in the Bronx at age 11 and continued in the trade for the remainder of his life.

An early member of the Young People’s Socialist League, Dolgoff left feeling that other members “regarded the Socialist Party as a vehicle of opportunity that enabled them to run for office, to find sinecures in government agencies and union bureaucracies, and only incidentally to improve the lives of those who voted for them”. Joining the International Workers of the World in 1922, he remained a member until his death in 1990, serving as a writer and editor in various movement related publications like the 1974 anthology, The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-Management in The Spanish Revolution, 1936 – 1939.

In this work, written in New York in 1971 and first published by the anarcho-feminist Soil Of Liberty Press in Minneapolis in 1977, Dolgoff warns that the bourgeois strain in leftist thought has been the cause of anarchism’s stagnation and looks to the solutions and complications presented with the rise of “cybernation”.

We consider that the constructive ideas of anarchism are rendered even more timely by the cybernetic revolution, still in its early stages, and will become increasingly more relevant as this revolution unfolds. There are, even now, no insurmountable technical-scientific barriers to the introduction of anarchism.

Calling for a return to Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899) and the use of technologically decentralized industry to
“achieve a greater balance between rural and urban living” and fulfill the ideal of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”, Dolgoff also warns against taking too utopian a view. In arguments eerily predictive of data collection, social media manipulation, and even Universal Basic Income, Dolgoff cautions that anarchism’s role is as a guiding compass against the “Establishment” using the technology means of artificial leisure to enslave.

This unusual example of the second edition, published in September 1979, features a purple stamped decoration of a cow and field on it’s wraps appropriately positioned with the title and author. All other examples found in plain white wraps, suggesting this may be an early or even test printing.

8vo, 22pp + 2 ads and references. Staple bound pamphlet with printed card wraps, price 60 cents and mailing address on reverse. Binding variant with purple cow stamp [?]. Wraps spotted with some uneven toning to front wrap. Various pen underlines and emphases. Some pages dogeared. Contemporary booksellers stamp in black ink back wrap interior. Good condition.

 

If you liked this book, you might also like this anarcho-syndicalist novel, subtitled, “How We Will Bring About The Revolution“.