Anarchism
Anarchism and anarchists and anything associated with the thinking, the people, or the history generally get a raw deal from the media and even mainstream historians. It is true that anarchism is profoundly anti-authoritarian, but its popular association with violence (wild-eyed bearded men throwing bombs) is exaggerated, even fictionalized by the very forces threatened by it, namely governments and the media with vested interests in things as they are.
As with any subversive political and economic movement, some proponents became impatient and felt justified in striking out in vengeance or justice. Thus you have Alexander Berkman and his attempted assassination of Pennsylvanian Henry Clay Frick in 1892 and Leon Czolgosz and his successful assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Berkman, however, served his time in jail, wrote a deep and insightful account of his experience and went on to write more worthwhile books on the subject which possessed his life. (Czolgosz did not have that opportunity, being executed forty-five days after the death of his victim.)
Anarchism survived its dramatic beginnings in the 19th Century, however, and interested readers can find its articulate concern with agricultural reform, labor rights, and prophetic worries about the growth of the surveillance state in many excellent books. Here you will find books and a superb documentary on Sacco and Vanzetti (as well as Woody Guthrie's cd of his investigation into the miscarriage of justice). Here you will find histories, biographies, anthologies, memoirs, and fiction. It is a rich tradition, relevant to this day and to the future.
Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States
Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States
Means and Ends is a new overview of the revolutionary strategy of anarchism in Europe and the United States between 1868 and 1939. Zoe Baker clearly and accessibly explains the ideas that historical anarchists developed in order to change the world. This includes their views on direct action, revolution, organization, state socialism, reforms, and trade unions. Throughout, she demonstrates that the reasons anarchists gave for supporting or opposing particular strategies were grounded in a theoretical framework—a theory of practice—which maintained that, as people engage in activity, they simultaneously change the world and themselves. This theoretical framework was the foundation for the anarchist commitment to the unity of means and ends: the means that revolutionaries propose to achieve social change have to involve forms of activity which transform people into individuals who are capable of, and driven to, both overthrow capitalism and the state and build a free society. The consistent heart of anarchism was the idea that anarchist ends can only be achieved through anarchist means. Cutting through misconceptions and historical inaccuracies, Baker draws upon a vast assortment of examples to show how this simple premise underpinned anarchist attempts to put theory into action.
Praise for Means and Ends:
"[The] quality of Zoe Baker's debut work is fundamentally inescapable...there is very little doubt that Means and Ends will join my shortlist of must-read histories of anarchism and the anarchist movement." —Jay Fraser, Organise Magazine
"An outstanding overview of the anarchist movement."—Wayne Price, Workers Solidarity
"This informed attempt at systematizing the history of anarchism has the notable merit of focusing on practices, rather than distant utopias, and of probing into the overlooked sophistication of the theory that underpins those practices."
—Davide Turcato, editor of The Complete Works of Malatesta
"In Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism, Zoe Baker draws from well-known and lesser-known anarchists to assemble a wide-ranging account of the strategies they have pursued to abolish capitalism and the state. Thoroughly researched, rich in detail, this book explores various ways in which anarchists have sought freedom within solidarity so that past experiences can inform present and future struggles."
—Kathy E. Ferguson, author of Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets
Zoe Baker is a libertarian socialist philosopher with a PhD on the history of anarchism.