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.
Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre
Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre was undeniably one of the most important anarchist thinkers in the US or anywhere else. Historian Paul Avrich considered her “a greater literary talent than any other American anarchist” and, moreover, a woman whose “whole life was a revolt against this system of male domination which, like every form of tyranny and exploitation, ran contrary to her anarchistic spirit.” Plagued by poverty and poor health—and a nearly successful assassination attempt—she maintained an intense schedule of writing, speaking, and organizing for much of her life. Widely admired by her contemporaries, including many political enemies, she was one of the foremost advocates of an inclusive “anarchism without adjectives,” while at the same time advancing an uncompromising and principled direct-action approach to political and economic struggle.
Soon after her premature death, her comrades gathered a selection of her work, edited by Alexander Berkman, introduced by Hippolyte Havel, and published by Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth Publishing Association. This facsimile edition changes nothing from the original 1914 version. Voltairine de Cleyre’s essays, poems, and stories ring just as true and clear today as they did a century ago.