Rebel Alliances

Concentrating on the class-struggle tradition within anarchism, as represented by current national federations in Britain, Benjamin Franks identifies the main principles that distinguish these movements from competing Leninist, liberal, and social democratic groupings. From these key characteristics Franks then constructs an "ideal type" of anarchism-a distinctive anarchist ethic-against which he assesses the theory and practice of contemporary political groups. With this lens the entire anarchist movement is judged, making comparisons between differing schools of thought and parallel theoretical frameworks such as Autonomist Marxism and the Situationist International.   Benjamin Franks is a lecturer in social and political philosophy at the University of Glasgow.