Charles Bufe, better known asChaz Bufe, is a contemporary Americananarchist author. Bufe writes on a wide variety of topics, and has published 16 books, most under the See Sharp Press imprint but one ("Godless") was published by PM Press and another ("Dreams of Freedom") by AK Press.
Bufe foundedSee Sharp Press in 1984 in San Francisco,[1] then relocated to Tucson, Arizona, in 1992. In its approximately 40 years, See Sharp Press has published over 50 books, almost as many pamphlets, and over the last decade occasional e-book-only titles. The 16 books Bufe has authored, co-authored, compiled, edited, or translated have garnered favorable reviews in publications such asPublishers Weekly andBooklist (Free Radicals),Z Magazine (Heretic's Handbook of Quotations),Free Inquiry (American Heretic's Dictionary), andGuitar Player andJazz Player (An Understandable Guide to Music Theory), and 11 are still in print. Bufe'sAmerican Heretic's Dictionary/Devil's Dictionaries was referenced byIslamOnline and recommended by theCape Cod Times[2] and ledAlterNet to call Bufe "theAmbrose Bierce of our time," although he has been accused of vanity and bad taste for mixing his own aphorisms with Bierce's in order to get them published.[3][4]
Bufe translated into English from SpanishRicardo Flores Magón'sFlores Magón Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magón Reader,Frank Fernández'sCuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement, and Rafael Uzcategui'sVenezuela: Revolution as Spectacle. He is also a musician; hisAn Understandable Guide to Music Theory is in its third edition.[5]
[Listen Anarchist!] is sure to become one of the most bitterly hated, fought over, and denounced tracts about Anarchism that has appeared in the last twenty years. The reason is that Bufe comes right out and says what he has to say, rather than couching it in a lot of dreary, boring, diffuse verbiage ... Nobody can mistake his meaning; nobody can pontificate on what he "really meant" to say, and for this reason you should read this pamphlet.
"Listen, Anarchist!" is an influential 1987 essay by Bufe on the internal dynamics of theAmerican anarchist movement.[6]
In this essay, Bufe[7] launches heavy criticism againstanarcho-primitivists, includingFredy Perlman and theVancouver Fiveeco-terrorist group, as well as the publicationsFifth Estate,Resistance,The Spark, andOpen Road.[6] In a section entitled "What Can Be Done?", Bufe advocates minimal use of violence in revolutionary political struggle, condemning the vanguardist "urban guerillas" ofinsurrectionary anarchism. He criticizes these and other so-called "lifestyle" anarchists in the movement for deliberately alienating mainstream society, and falling to victim to dangerousirrationality andmysticism.[8]
In his account of "marginalised" anarchists, Bufe criticizes theanti-work tendency incontemporary anarchism, accusing some of its advocates of beingparasites of those who do work.[8] In response, Feral Faun wrote an article called "The Bourgeois Roots of Anarcho-Syndicalism" in which he claims that the endorsement of work showed thatanarcho-syndicalists "embrace the values essential to capitalism", only objecting to who is in charge.[9] The Summer 2005 issue ofGreen Anarchy included an "update on workerist morality", in which they characterised "Listen, Anarchist!" asSam Dolgoff'sRelevance and Murray Bookchin's "Listen Marxist!" poorly rewritten by Bufe to "shake his fist at all the young rapscallions who were throwing rocks at his perfect, beautiful philosophy".[10]
In the introduction to the second edition,Janet Biehl proposes that many of the tendencies within anarchism that Bufe criticizes stem from itsindividualist wing, inspired by thephilosophy of Max Stirner, which she maintains is the source of "lifestyle anarchists" who are at odds with theethical socialist tradition of anarchism.[11] Biehl criticizes the perceived lack of concern formorality amongpost-left anarchists such asBob Black.[11]
Allan Antliff described the work as "abusive", and said that its distribution by theWorkers Solidarity Alliance belied the organisation's pretensions of anti-sectarianism.[6]MutualistKevin Carson recommended the pamphlet as suggested reading for "getting from here to there".[12]
Bufe's "A Future Worth Living" and "Design Your Own Utopia" were critically reviewed by Bob Black in "Bufe Goof" and "Views From Nowhere", respectively.[13][14]
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