The Anarchist Ethics of Ricardo Flores Magon

In this episode of Conversations on Anarres, we talk with Dr. Sergio Gallegos, who teaches philosophy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the City University of New York, about the anarchist ethics of Ricardo Flores Magon.  

A key figure in the development of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Flores Magon was deeply inspired by anarchist thought and worked to organize workers on both sides of the Mexican/U.S. border.  He fled from Mexico into the United States during the revolution and inspired labor struggles among Mexican American workers.  Flores Magon died in a US prison in 1921.

Gallegos focuses his work on the ethical theory of Flores Magon, which we reconstructs from numerous sources, including Flores Magon's political writing, journalism, and plays.  Gallegos argues that Flores Magon offers a unique ethical outlook that urges us to take action against poverty and pervasive structural inequality that robs the majority of people of liberty.  He believes that these ethical lessons have a lot to tell us about how to frame social movements today.