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How is it possible to live free and joyful in this world of domination? The key idea Nietzsche offers us is this: don’t hide from struggle in fantasy worlds or imaginary futures, but affirm life, say yes to life here and now. With all its violence, cruelty and loneliness; and all its encounters of tenderness, wildness, delight and possibility.

This essay is a revised version of the introduction to Daniel Guerin’s ‘Anarchism: From Theory to Practice’. In a slightly different version, it appeared in the ‘New York Review of Books’, May 21, 1970.

Proudhon is famous for two reasons. First, he’s the author of What is Property? the book containing the immortal phrase “property is theft!” Second, he has emerged as the ‘first’ anarchist. This accolade is explained in part by his provocative reclamation of ‘anarchy’. Until Proudhon published his critique of property in 1840 the term had only been applied pejoratively. In the other part, it comes from his encounter with Marx. In 1846 Proudhon rebuffed Marx’s tentative advances and hinted that he found his proposals dogmatic. Text by Ruth Kinna and cover art is by Clifford Harper.

“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.” So begins this infamous text by Valerie Solanas

This is the true story of an anarchist’s honest attempt to work within the NHS and its Trade Unions, with the aim of improving the conditions for both workes and patients. Peter Good is the force of nature behind The Cunnigham Amendment journal.

From the Arab Spring to the plaza occupation movement in Spain, the student movement in the UK and Occupy in the US, many new social movements have started peacefully, only to adopt a diversity of tactics as they grew in strength and collective experiences. 

The suppression of the most revolutionary section of the Navy by the Bolsheviks was the final blow to any hope of a genuine revolution based on democratic workers' control. Mett dispels many of the contemporary mistruths put forward by Bolshevik propagandists and includes a number of original sources from the commune.

The Lianas that Strangled the Serpent is a trilingual novel set in the 1930s that details the struggle against fascism within the German community in Mexico City. It does so through the experience of Otto, an anarchist worker and second generation immigrant. His political deception of the post-revolutionary period as well as his personal inclinations towards cynicism will be temporarily dropped when facing the need to confront the immediate expansion of fascism in Mexico and in Europe. It is a story that speaks of antifascism and of international solidarity, a snapshot of a historical period full of global changes, focusing on the impact they left on the lives of normal people.

Of the generation that came of age through the turbulent events of May 1968, Fredy Perlman is certainly an individual that shines brightly. He participated in a student-worker action committee at the Sorbonne, which had been occupied by its students. During these intense event filled weeks he came across ideas and histories that would influence him over the following decade: the political critiques of the Situationist International, anarchism and the history of the Spanish Revolution, and the council communists.

When the Bolsheviks usurped the Russian Revolution, it was a disaster for anti-capitalist movements everywhere. This book traces a timeline of the Bolshevik crackdown on revolutionary currents in Russia and elsewhere around the world, starting before the October Revolution and running up to the treaty between Stalin and Hitler. It includes a treasury of quotations from some of the anarchists who helped make the revolution only to perish under the heel of authoritarians.

Godwin was an eighteenth-century radical writer and journalist and one of the leading participants in the debates sparked by the French Revolution. Text by Ruth Kinna and cover art is by Clifford Harper.