I wrote a review of Jasper Bernes' excellent book The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising which was recently published with Verso. Titled "The Test of Anarchy," the review reflects upon Bernes' understanding of the prerequisities of both communism and the struggle against capital, and tries to elaborate upon some fo the anarchist positions inherent in his analysis. You can read the review by clicking here, and Bernes' book can be found on Verso's site.

The review has also been translated in Spanish and German.

Here is a brief excerpt from the review:

The Paris Commune and ICE vehicles being pelted by chunks of concrete. The Egyptian Revolution and rows of self-driving cars engulfed in flames. The Spanish Civil War and crowds blocking a freeway blanketed with thick clouds of tear gas. These were among the juxtapositions which arose as I read through Jasper Bernes’ The Future of Revolution and received message after message about the revolts in Los Angeles from friends scattered across the globe, dispersed fragments of time colliding and sending sparks off of one another, signaling towards somewhere still unknown. Both the book and the revolts in the end pose a shared question, one in the language of theory and the other in the language of practice: how might we not only fully crash against the order of this world, but finally break through and reach what lies on the other side?

The Future of Revolution develops its response to this question by tracing the outlines of a communist future in the shape of a diversity of insurgent pasts. Taking as its object the global history of the workers council—navigating through its many theorizations and contradictions, its various defeats and still smoldering potentials—the book draws out the negative and positive features which remain integral to communist struggle, coming together in what Bernes conceptualizes as the test of communism:

“The test of communism tells us what but not how: (communism) must be armed; it must break the armed power of the state; it must be proletarian, drawing the vast majority of society into voluntary associations laying direct claim to the totality of social wealth; it must be communist, provisioning for common use according to a common plan without legal regulation or exchange; it must overcome the divisions between people and places cemented into the division of labor and the structure of the enterprise; it must be transparent, comprehensible to all, and tractable, allowing people to participate in decisions that concern them through structures of recallable, mandated delegation committed to the reproduction of classless, moneyless, stateless society.”

This test does not aspire to dictate a precise sequence or course which uprisings must then obey, but rather to discern the necessary foundations of a struggle which understands its historical task to be the destruction of capitalist society and the construction of a communist one.

other updates

10.06.2026	Firestorm Books event on The Reticular Society

06.06.2026	Contract signed for The Anarchy of the Ethical

11.03.2026	New Translation in ΣΗΜΕΙΩΣΕΙΣ ΤΗΣ ΣΤΕΠΑΣ

13.02.2026	Conversation with Lundimatin

09.11.2024	Interview with the Destructionist International