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Anarchism is a gathering wilderness that continually defies the confusions and contradictions of capitalism and its current incarnation as neoliberalism. Rooting itself in the tiny forgotten cracks of our fractured order, anarchism heaves open spaces of resistance and rebellion with the energy of a thousand suns. It is the strength that comes when we recognise the beauty of our own lives by seeing ourselves reflected in the lives of others. A dagger in the heart of domination, a clarion call for mutual aid, an unyielding spirit of revolt, anarchism allows us to acknowledge our connection to the Earth, to each other and to the entirety of existence. More than mere ideology, anarchism is a way of knowing and being in a world that situates humanity as but a single flowering within the great mystery of consciousness. Anarchism above all else, as this primer makes clear, is a geography of possibilities.

First published in 1981, Anarchism: Arguments for and against is the most reprinted of Albert’s writings. The roots of this text lie in this 1968 pamphlet Aims and principles of Anarchism: an essay at defining what the Anarchist Movement is and how wide a field it covers, the book he co-wrote with Stuart Christie The Floodgates of Anarchy (published in 1970) and a series of articles on ‘objections to Anarchism’ in Black Flag in the early seventies. This final edition shows how Albert responded as the movement changed around him...

Beasts of Burden was first published in October 1999. The aim of the anonymous pamphlet was to initiate a debate between animal liberationists and revolutionaries – anarchists and communists (the author uses the term ‘communist’ repeatedly and means communism in its original sense: a stateless and classless society where people live together and ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’. We are reissuing it with a new introduction.

To the political left Hunter's people are the ignorant and the ill informed, to the victorious right they are the unwashed and discarded waste product of the labouring class. Chav Solidarity is part autobiography, part meditation on trauma, class and identity, part one finger salute into the face of respectability politics, but mostly an articulation of the contradictory heart of Chavvy shit heads across the U.K.

Malatesta is the direct link between the demise of the First International in 1871 and the struggle against European fascism that started some forty years later. After the ruckus between Marx and Bakunin catalysed the separate development of revolutionary socialist organisations, he joined both the anarchist Federalist International and its Italian section. Spending long stretches of time in exile, dodging arrest and escaping jail, he lived much of his life like the great white shark, permanently on the move.

Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous - and notorious - woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin’s Bolshevik experiment, and more. Volume 1

Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous - and notorious - woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin’s Bolshevik experiment, and more. Volume 1 - 3, complete 

Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous - and notorious - woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin’s Bolshevik experiment, and more. Volume 2

Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous - and notorious - woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin’s Bolshevik experiment, and more. Volume 3

In 1900 a Republican-leaning US local broadsheet crowned Lucy Parsons an anarchist queen. The widow of Albert Parsons, she never played second fiddle to Albert nor stood in his shadow. She was a talented writer, orator and organiser. Text by Ruth Kinna and cover art is by Clifford Harper.

“Born Johann Kaspar Schmidt in Beyreuth in 1806, Stirner is one of the most controversial anarchists, by turns celebrated as the seminal anarchist theorist and marginalised as a political philosopher only tangentially related to the anarchist movement.” So begins the text by Ruth Kinna and cover art is by Clifford Harper.

These short introductions delve into the anarchist canon to recover some of the distinctive ideas that historical anarchists advanced to address problems relevant to their circumstances. Although these contexts were special, many of the issues the anarchists wrestled with still plague our lives. Anarchists developed a body of writing about power, domination, injustice and exploitation, education, prisons and a lot more besides. Honing in on different facets of the anarchist canon is not just an interesting archaeological exercise.