Anarchism

Anarchism is one of the most misunderstood political traditions in the world. This book gives you the real thing: what anarchists argued, what they built, and where their ideas broke down. Ten chapters trace the tradition across two centuries, starting with the first thinkers who questioned government in the 1790s and closing with the mutual aid networks that fed people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Theory and practice sit side by side throughout, because anarchists have always insisted the two can’t be separated. The chapters cover: - What the word anarchy actually means, why order without rulers has nothing to do with chaos, and how the four strands differ: individualist, social, anarcho-syndicalist, anarcho-communist - William Godwin, Max Stirner, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the self-taught printer who took the insult anarchist in 1840 and claimed it as a coherent political position - Bakunin’s split with Marx, Kropotkin on mutual aid, Emma Goldman on free speech and women’s freedom, plus Errico Malatesta and Lucy Parsons - The Haymarket bombing of 1886 and the origin of May Day - The Paris Commune, Nestor Makhno’s peasant armies in Ukraine, and the Spanish Revolution of 1936, when a union of a million members ran the factories, trams, and bakeries of Barcelona - How an anarchist economy would handle money, work, and property, including mutual credit banks and the collectivized farms of Catalonia - Prefigurative politics, the argument that government is coercive by nature, and why most anarchists refuse to vote or run for office - Anarcha-feminism, queer and anti-colonial organizing, the Situationists, anarcho-primitivism, and the fight over technology that split the movement - Seattle 1999, Occupy Wall Street, disaster relief networks, and today’s argument between insurrectionism and patient organizing Five closing sections follow chapter ten. A timeline runs from 1548 through 2020 so the events in different chapters line up against each other. A glossary defines the vocabulary in plain terms. Every chapter ends with a discussion question, and worked example answers let you compare your thinking against another take. A cited reading list points you toward the original books. Written for readers with no background in political theory, for students of political science and modern history, and for anyone who has watched neighbors feed each other after a storm or protesters make decisions in a circle and wondered where those practices came from. The failures get the same attention as the victories here. You will read how anarchists themselves have argued for a century and a half about coordinating a large economy, about hidden cliques that take over supposedly leaderless groups, and about defending a free society against organized violence. Whatever you conclude, you will be arguing with the real tradition instead of a caricature of anarchist thinking.