The Libertarian Book Club,* New York City’s oldest continuously active anarchist institution (founded 1946), kicks off a new season of its Anarchist Forum series as Bill Weinberg, editor of World War 4 Report (and until recently a producer at WBAI radio), leads a discussion on the theme: “NEITHER NATO NOR QADDAFI, THANK YOU! Anarchist perspectives on Libya, the Arab Spring and the crisis in North Africa, and what has changed with the Western military intervention.”
Tuesday, April 26
7 PM sharp at
Simple Studios
134 W.29th (2nd floor between 6th & 7th)
*We are not right-wing, capital-L Libertarians. We are left-wing anarchists. When LBC was founded in 1946, the word “libertarian” had not yet been co-opted by the free-market right, and was basically a synonym for “anti-authoritarian” or “anarchist.” We stubbornly refuse to surrender the name.
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Correction on libertarian bookstore
It was Laissez Faire books that was a hot bed of Ayn Rand thinking not the Libertarian Book Club.
Please excuse the confusion.
LBC has always been libertarian anarchist.
A fellow anarchist old-timer, eh?
Wow, I thought I was one of the few that remember Laissez Faire Books—on Mercer between Bleecker and Houston, a site which I think still miraculously remains a bookstore today. Laissez Faire must have closed in the ’80s, maybe early ’90s? It was refreshingly ecumenical—definitely run by Libertarian Party types, but they sold left-wing anarchist journals like Vancouver’s Open Road and the Yippies’ Overthrow (my alma mater) as well as Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Weird, but I give ’em creds.
We also had a couple of long-haired (“cultural”) Libertarian Party types hanging around the LBC too, though it was founded by left-wing anarchist exiles from Europe—mostly Jews, some Italians. Legendary members included anarcho-syndicalist Sam Dolgoff, the anarchist historian Paul Avrich (a second-generation anarchist), and the fabled Jack Fraser, who supposedly knew Emma Goldman. He was gone by the time I came along. I still remember Valerio, the old Italian guy who had fled Mussolini and faithfully came to every forum until his death in his ’90s. I wondered how much he understood after the neo-hippies, anarcho-punks, TAZ-heads and post-Situationists breathed new life into the LBC in the ’80s… That was the revival, when Peter Lamborn Wilson (founder of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade) became the new star.
Just a little history.
Anarchist Forum makes The Forward!
Great to see the Libertarian Book Club Anarchist Forum get a write-up in The Forward of June 30, though I’m not too crazy about the use of the word “mundane” to describe us… (even if it was intended as a back-handed compliment that we are not black-caped bomb-throwers…)