Next Phase

Little Black Cart has reached the bottom of the hill it has been speeding down. We're headed out to new adventures where only the cranky and brave can survive.

December 31, 2023 is the last day of the distro, and close to the last day of book production. We've loved being thought-provoking and occasionally anxiety-producing, existing in a space between tendencies, trajectories, and conversations that don't usually get along. We know you will find and/or create projects that do the same, maybe even better.

Long live distroism!

There are 77 Comments

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end of an era....sad

thanks for going as long as you have!

Good riddance

This is a tragedy diminishing the range of thought and communication coming from anarchists. I hope other projects can rise from the ashes of this one. Thank you for everything you've done over the years.

I've had a love/hate relationship with LBC over the years, most if it due to interpersonal junk. But I've always appreciated the breadth of material published and distributed. LBC has given voice to otherwise silenced individuals and tendencies within and beyond the fringes of anarchist thought. You will be missed.

Bummer, but props for knowing when to move on. Too many projects just don’t know when to quit

Will PDFs of LBC titles be made available? Or do they already exist somewhere and I’m just not hip to it

exploring options, but first a lot of stuff is already up on theanarchistlibrary.org, of course.

and there's a new online project starting where at least some of the pdfs will live, as well as information about how to make books--with info on printers, binders, and cutters, among other things.

also there's still going to be a kind of internship/maybe more like writer residence program, so... things will be happening. all of it will get announced here first, no doubt.

ps: i fucking swear i hit the reply button, lol.
and thanks to the folks who care about the project! we've met and heard from a ton of awesome folks over the years. those memories and interactions live on.

Wayne P, here's a good place to start reading about what anarchy is all about, and it's free!

if you search little black cart on libgen there are many treasures there, too

I trust that The Anarchist Library received consent from the authors whose sales they are basically halting outright.

I hope that LBC isn't closing because The Anarchist Library killed their sales.

What will LBC do with their unused means of book production? I suggest donating it to on the the Indigenous anarchist publishing collectives whose unceded land they are occupying.

Consent isn't necessary when all of LBC's products are (at most) licensed under Creative Commons, meaning the only thing you're obligated to not do is resell or reuse the content for commercial purposes. If that was going to kill them, it would've happened years ago. Besides, with publishing being what it is, it's completely risible to suggest that the sales of even their bestsellers ever put that much food in the mouths of any of their published authors to begin with: Wolfi Landstreicher for example can't even accept monetary remuneration for any of his work. LBC's mission statement even says it all: "We do this publishing, distributing, conversing, problematizing and problem-solving with the full knowledge that we will never see the realization of our desires."

You're doing a lot of gymnastics to justify so-called anarchists avoid paying authors. Many of the texts were not at all CC until LBC stamped that on them.

LBC was a for-profit, capitalist project that just didn't do too well at making a profit. Aragorn! even said so himself in many of the podcasts he spoke on. This does not justify not paying the creatives whose work you are selling.

Fuck you, pay your authors.

aragorn! saying lbc didn't make much money doesn't mean lbc didn't remunerate their authors. funny how you seem to be representing this group of people without much actual information to back up your opinions. which authors didn't get paid?

"which authors didn't get paid?"

Still waiting.

Cashapp: blackandgreenpress
Vanma: blackandgreen
Paypal: blackandgreen

Damn, feels bizarre to witness the slow death of post-left anarchism—though it's hard to imagine the landscape without Aragorn. A hugely formative project for myself and I'm sure many others. You will be missed.

the post-left is not dead yet, but it is being murdered by anarcho-leftists for sure.

Imagine being so uncreative you can’t define yourself without being a hyphenation of something. Sheesh. Doomed to fail, if you ask me. Neech and Stirn knew this loOong ago.

Schopenhauer was an incel. Neech moved way BEYOND him. Just. Read. Neech.

Neech was a 30yr old virgin brah, only Stirner got his jousouince off in his teens

Yea, plus Stirner had better kicks from the top Berlin brothels (mmmuah! Finest in Europe back in the days, aside from maybe Paris) while Neech got low-tier STD-infected rural prostitutes. Stirner SUPERIOR at every level!

Stirner's bold individuality gave him a esprit virilité which made him soOoo irresistible to the staff of these brothels that they donated their services free of charge.

Our base, animal desires are secondary and can't hold a candle to feeling of finishing a giant essay.

Also, if you actually read Neech you'd know that because of Eternal Return he only needed to have sex one time because he was basically having it ALL THE TIME for all eternity.

Every ubermench-anarch knows this.

Post left anarchy... how to say you're an anarchist without actually being an anarchist. An armchairs guide to nothingness.

There's a nuance you are missing here. What you are talking about is not post-left, it's neo-left, a big difference.
For instance, their love of unskilled immigrant workers who land in their new countries end up doing all the unpleasant service jobs that natives won’t do. The neo-leftists, don’t care about the impoverished so long as they don’t move to Long Island.
The twenty-first century neo-left's disregard of civil liberties in favor of the corporatist state. Vaccine mandates, rich-kid tech types dominating anti-fossil fuel propaganda to boost their solar electric car empires. The neo-left elite don’t like religion unless it is that of Gaia and the church of woke.

When did this little reactionary alt-manboy invade my beloved anews with his dogshit takes? Imagine thinking anarchists don't see right through your "anti-woke" pee pee poo poo and spending your ENTIRE day seething on post- vs neo- jibber-jabber. Every fucking day I reload this site and there he is pooping his pants complaining about something. How boring.

Look into it....

Shut the fuck up moron. This is "post-left anarchism" ridding itself of a centralized corporation which decides what books to market to us. In LBC's death a million billion distros will flourish. A lot of the shit LBC carries is from other places anyway: fifthestate.org detritusbooks.com contagionpress.com autonomedia.org

lbc has hardly been keeping a million billion distros from flourishing. i guess we should check back in a couple of years to test your hypothesis. oh, but you're anon, so you can talk wahtever shit you want and then ..poof..

also, lbc works with other projects and also makes their own stuff. is there some ratio of original to stuff from other projects that you're saying is acceptable? should it be 50/50? 80/20? tell us! do you think it didn't help those projects that lbc was assisting in spreading their titles and names around? do you think that won't be missed?

and your name-calling is subpar too.

You should upload PDF's of your catalogue to the internet archive or libcom or something

Appreciated the work that LBC put in over the years.

But also I'm extremely glad to see the slow death of "post-left" anarchism. It was a theoretical and strategic dead end.

It's not synonymous with LBC and it's doing no worse then all the other anarchisms. If anything it will be the tendency that kicks off the new radical discourses. As someone who's peeked into some of the more radical metamodern spaces for instance(The Stoa) I've seen interest in the likes of John Zerzan and Uncle Ted.

It's not going anywhere. The real dead end is left anarchism.

Aye, post-left must be almost alien to the present form of humanist labor/capital interaction. Things will be present, like instead of 100 million washing machines there will be giant waterfalls in even plateau where hygiene and hydro-ele tricity allow for fun experimentation in human association and creativity. Musical instruments instead of public urinals will provide entertainment and troubadours will wander the earth as sacred ubermensch bringing revolutions in joy and justice.

Ah, the city's eternally-shitty, control-freak admin is already supporting public pianos in parks. So your liberal trolling is dumb, dumbo. And yes, public pianos coming with brutal predator cops and their endless hordes of cop-callers ain't exactly my dream anarchy, thanks.

OooOooh nOooo, I meant the whole planet is a park, and musical instruments are like cell phones are today, everyone carries one, and there are fruit, berry and nut bushes growing everywhere for free food, and there is bartering/gifting, all like a primitivist environment but with donkeys and carts and steam engines if some workoholic type folk want to go to the hassle and complicate their own little sphere, well then let them. Of course there will always be the philosophical types who will form an elitist thinking club and hang out in bars and start telling people how to live and think, but they will be spurned and ridiculed by the anarchs. Life will be fun and police and prisons will have become obsolete. It will resemble an indigenous culture throughout the would without borders or tribal boundaries.

why?

It is a fucking shame, but I wish you the best... Too few are willing to embrace the role of villain, or at least not compromise in order to avoid it. In a sea of woke tenders who think "one size fits all" and that cancellation is the only go-to, your project was and is important. May you go on to do great things, whatever they be... and may they be provocative, interesting and unique!

Hail Satan!

Thanks LBC, I liked stumbling upon your website and buying all sorts of problematic shit that may have landed me on a watchlist somewhere. Much appreciated, and best of luck to y'all !

RIP didn't agree with the political tendency but benefited from the willingness to distro controversy

Thanks for publishing me when no one else would

truly the end of post left anarchist publishing. underworld amusements and nine banded books it is :(

"underworld amusements "

Equating LBC with UA. So fucked up LMAO

haha APRIL FOOLS...

wait... this isn't true, right? surely one of the only anarchist publishers with guts isn't calling it quits... FUCK

Anarchism is dead! Long live anarchy!

Also wtf do you need an anarchist publisher? All the books you need have already been written!

THAT'S RIGHT!

GO READ SOME NEECH!

NEECH IT UP, BITCHES!

I wonder if LBC takes this opportunity to corner the ripe-for-the-taking anarchist pornography market and uses their very anarchist technology infrastructure to record and distribute pornography videos. They could call the new endeavor: "Little B Cock" to fit with their theme. SirEinzige would approve. Long live distroism!

It’s good that the people at LBC are finally seeing that capitalist endeavors like book publishing companies can never be anarchist. Good on them. Long live anarchy!

i'll always respect them for publishing Atassa and giving us Indigenous people a voice

Indigenous people already had a voice. We didn’t need a capitalist project (run by anarchists or otherwise) to give it to us, brah. Your kind of thinking is a dead end.

LOL Atassa.

a voice? homie, we are the most erased people on this planet, no one cares about us Indigenous people especially on this American continent at least LBC published some writing from actual Indigenous people who were tired of the bullshit fucking anarchists pretending we don't exist, Atassa had important writing for indigenous people to remember our past

Look, "homie," we know you're probably larping here for whatever troll reasons that gets you going, because if you were actually serious you'd have known to say Black Seed in your rants (and not Atassa). We can agree that Black Seed had some important writings. Still, LBC did not "give voice" to Indigenous anarchists. It boosted and capitalized on us. There is a difference.

Stop trolling and read some Neech.

someone disagreeing with you is larping? because they found something valuable that you didn't?

everyone online is paranoid. the future looks bright

Black Seed had good writing too, but I most def meant Atassa 1 and 2

at least LBC had the balls to publish Atassa or at least have it available

you claim you are indigenous and then call me a larper, and then tell me to read mother fucking Neech lmao, alright homie you embarrassed yourself enough here

Lbc definitely published atassa. "ahave it available"?

And what about being indigenous means you shouldn't recommend that someone read nietzsche? (Although it is a weird flex here.)

What are these weird binaries!?!?

Yeah well identity politics has filled this void now, probably a contributing factor in its demise.

...has been a super effective counter-insurrectionary psyop by the neoliberal powerstructure.

Change my mind.

(also, read some neech!!)

why would we change your mind? you are 100% correct neech preacher

think it was aragorn who said it best, "the gravitational pull of identity"

I would have been more poetic and described it as -- the call of the herd to adopt an identity ---

better quit your day job and start writing poetry full time!

Apparently they have a high quality fax-machine (whatever that is) going dirt cheap.

I hold no negative feelings towards this association and those who devoted their time to publishing free thinking creative ideas whatever the consequences. This is not an ethical arena.

could you please, please, please pin this post for a while? i'm enjoying reading all the love, the h8ers, the ideas for future projects etc. would be a shame to see it bumped off the front page by 'person asked to leave bookshop' etc

anews is a gift.

Thank you, LBC, for providing a thoughtful and open-minded space with your publishing and related projects during a time when so much of anarchism has been being overtaken by rank shitlibbery.

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