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Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas #1

From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939)

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Volume One of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, is a comprehensive and far ranging collection of anarchist writings from the feudal era (300) to 1939. Edited and introduced by noted anarchist scholar Robert Graham, the collection will include the definitive texts from the anarchist tradition of political thought, beginning with some of the earliest writings from China and Europe against feudal servitude and authority.

The collection will then go on to document the best of the anti-authoritarian writings from the English and French Revolutions and the early development of libertarian socialist ideas, including such writers as Gerrard Winstanley, William Godwin, Charles Fourier, Max Stirner, as well as the early anarchist writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Elisee Reclus, Leo Tolstoy, and Emma Goldman.

This incomparable volume deals both with the positive ideas and proposals the anarchists tried to put into practice, and with the anarchist critiques of the authoritarian theories and practices confronting them during these years with their revolutionary upheavals.

Robert Graham has written extensively on the history of anarchist ideas. He is the author of “The Role of Contract in Anarchist Ideology,” in the Routledge publication, For Anarchism, edited by David Goodway, and he wrote the introduction to the 1989 Pluto Press edition of Proudhon’s General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century, originally published in 1851. He has been doing research and writing on the historical development of anarchist ideas for over 20 years and is a well respected commentator in the field.

Includes original portraits of the anarchists drawn by Maurice Spira specifically for this book Spira’s imagery is rooted to the political, his subject matter global. Works such as “Battle of Seattle,” “Gulf,” and “Refugees” are the visual equivalent of newspaper headlines.

536 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

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Robert Graham

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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Profile Image for Stephie Jane Rexroth.
127 reviews33 followers
January 12, 2014
"Life is a weapon. Where should it strike, against which obstacle should our muscle-power be deployed, how shall we crown our desires? Is it the better choice to burn ourselves out all in one go and die the ardent death of a bullet shattering against the wall, or grow old on the never-ending road and outlive hope?"

- Rafael Barrett: Striving for Anarchism (1910)

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"I, who back down before no consequence, say: Man is sovereign, that is my principle; power is the negation of his sovereignty, this my revolutionary justification; I must destroy that power, that is my goal. Thus I know from where I start and where I am bound and I do not falter."

"I persist in condemning as tyrannical and absurd all forms of government, or, which amounts to the same thing, all societies as presently constituted… My conclusion, therefore, is that either society is not society, or, if it is, it is such by virtue of my consent."

"The constitution of a society without power is the ultimate of my revolutionary aspirations; with that final objective in mind, I must determine all manner of reforms."

"Power, currently, should be reduced to its smallest possible expression. I shall divide and sub-divide power, I shall mobilize it and, rest assured, I shall destroy it."

— Fransisco Pi y Margall: Reaction and Revolution (1854)

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"Since it seems that any heart which beats for liberty has the right only to a small lump of lead, I demand my share. […] If you are not cowards, kill me."

— Louise Michel: In Defense of the Commune (1871)

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"The fertility of mind, of feeling or of goodwill takes all possible forms. It is in the passionate seeker of truth, who renounces all other pleasures to throw his energy into the search for what he believes true and right contrary to the affirmations of the ignoramuses around him… It is the ardent revolutionist to whom the joys of art, of science, even of family life, seem bitter, so long as they cannot be shared by all, and who works despite misery and persecution for the regeneration of the world."

— Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Morality (1890)

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"Progress is the realization of Utopias."

"Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. "

"People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous."

—Oscar Wilde, The Soul of a Man Under Socialism (1891)

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"Meanwhile the human herd, unconscious of its right to life, turns and bends its back to develop by its toil for others this Earth which Nature has placed at its own service, thus perpetuating [by] its own submissiveness the empire of injustice. But, from the slavish and bemired mass rebels arise; from the sea of backs there emerge the heads of the first revolutionaries. The herd trembles for it foresees chastisement. Tyranny trembles, for it foresees attack. And breaking the silence, a shout, like a roar of thunder, rolls over the backs and reaches even to the thrones: 'The Land!'"

"Slaves! Take the Winchester in hand! Work the land; but only after you have taken it into your possession! To work it now is to rivet your chains, for you are producing more wealth for the masters, and wealth is power, wealth is strength, physical and moral, and the strong will hold you always in subjection. Be strong yourselves!"

— Ricardo Flores Magón, "To Arms! To Arms for Land and Liberty!" Regeneración (1910)

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"When the miserable and disinherited of the earth shall unite in their own interest, trade with trade, nation with nation, race with race; when they shall fully awake to their sufferings and their purpose, doubt not that an occasion will assuredly present itself for the employment of their might in the service of right; and powerful as may be the Master of those days, he will be weak before the starving masses leagued against him. To the great evolution now taking place will succeed the long expected, the great revolution."

— Élisée Reclus: Evolution and Revolution (1891)

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"These days 'freedom' and 'equality' have become the pet phrases of some people. If you ask them what freedom means, they will answer: 'Freedom refers to freedom of speech, press, organization and correspondence.' If you ask them what equality means, they will answer: 'Every citizen is equal before the law without discrimination.' However, this is not genuine freedom and equality… I believe that only anarchism means genuine freedom and communism means genuine equality. The only way to build a society of genuine freedom and equality is social revolution."

— Li Pei Kan: How to build a society of genuine freedom and equality (1921)

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"Modern capitalism, no longer able to justify itself from either a practical or a moral point of view, inevitably finished up by adopting the methods of Fascism… Fascism, that is, a politico-economic state where the ruling class of each country behaves toward its own people as for several centuries it had behaved to the colonial peoples under its heel; which takes from its victims one after the other, the few political and social rights which they enjoyed; Fascism while is always lowering wages and reducing human beings, men and women, to a state of slavery; Fascism is the last despairing stand which imperialist capitalism must inevitably make, unless the working-class opposes it with all its might… It may therefore be said that Fascism in a country is nothing but imperialism the wrong way up, turned against its own people, and that imperialism is only Fascism the wrong way up, turned against foreign peoples. In both cases, the essence of the thing is violence."

— Bart de Ligt: The Conquest of Violence (1937)

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"The morbid desire to make millions of men submissive to a definitive will and to force whole empires into courses which are useful to the secret purposes of small minorities, is frequently more evident in the typical representatives of modern capitalism than are purely economic considerations or the prospect of greater material profit."

"The desire to bring everything under one rule, to unite mechanically and to subject to its will every social activity, is fundamental in every power. It does not matter whether we are dealing with the person of absolute monarch of former times, the national unity of a constitutionally elected representative government, or the centralistic aims of a party which has made conquest of power its slogan."

—Rudolf Rocker: Nationalism and Culture (1937)

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"It is not enough to say: 'We must target women with our propaganda and draw women into our ranks;' we have to take things further, much further than that. The vast majority of male comrades—with the exception of a half dozen right-thinking types—have minds infected by the most typical bourgeois prejudices. Even as they rail against property, they are rabidly proprietorial. Even as they rant against slavery, they are the cruelest of 'masters.' Even as they vent their fury on monopoly, they are the most dyed-in-the-wool monopolists. And all of this derives from the phoniest notion that humanity has ever managed to devise. The supposed 'inferiority of women.' A mistaken notion that may well have set civilization back by centuries."

—Lucía Sánchez Saornil: The Question of Feminism (1935)

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"I consider anarchism the most beautiful and practical philosophy that has yet been thought of in its application to individual expression and the relation it establishes between the individual and society. Moreover, I am certain that Anarchism is too vital and too close to human nature to ever die. It is my conviction that dictatorship, whether to the right or to the left, can never work—that it has never worked, and that time will prove this again, as it has before. When the failure of modern dictatorship and authoritarian philosophies become more apparent and the realization of failure more general, Anarchism will be vindicated. Consider from this point, a recrudescence of Anarchist ideas in the near future is very possible. When this occurs and takes effect, I believe that humanity will at last leave the maze in which it is now lost and will start on the path to sane living and regeneration through freedom."

— Emma Goldman, Was My Life Worth Living (1934)

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"I realize that form, pattern, and order are essential aspects of existence, but in themselves they are the attributes of death. To make life, to insure progress, to create interest and vividness, it is necessary to break form, to distort pattern, to change the nature of our civilization. In order to create, it is necessary to destroy; and the agent of destruction in our society is the poet."

"I am not concerned with the practicability of a program. I am only concerned to established truth, an to resist all forms of dictation and coercion. I shall endeavor to live as an individual, to develop my individuality; and if necessary I shall be isolated in a prison rather than submit to the indignities of war and collectivism. It is the only protest an individual can make against the mass stupidity of the modern world."

"[It] would be better to begin with a revolution… than to go through the slow-motion agony of a so-called 'transitional period.' A transitional period is merely a bureaucratic device for postponing the inevitable."

"The society I desire and will and plan is a leisure society—a society giving full opportunity for the education and development of the mind. Mind only requires time and space—to differentiate itself. The worst conditions of intellectual uniformity and stupidity are created by conditions of poverty and lack of leisure."

"For the anarchist objects, not merely to the personal tyranny of a leader like Stalin, but still more to the impersonal tyranny of a bureaucratic machine… In any case, lazy or efficient, honest or corrupt, a bureaucracy has nothing to do with the people; it is a parasitic body, and has to be maintained by taxation and extortion. Once established… it will do everything possible to consolidate its position and maintain its power. Even if you abolish all other classes and distinctions and retain a bureaucracy you are still far from the classless society, for the bureaucracy is itself the nucleus of a class whose interests are totally opposed to the people it supposedly serves."

"Universal political franchise has been a failure—that we have to confess. Only a minority of the people is politically conscious, and the remainder only exist to have their ignorance and apathy exploited by an unscrupulous Press. But do not let us confuse universal franchise, which is a system of election, with democracy, which is a principle of social organization. Universal franchise is no more essential to democracy than divine right is to monarchy. It is a myth: a quite illusory delegation of power. Justice, equality, freedom—these are the true principles of democracy, and it is possible—it had been amply proved by events in Italy and Germany—that the universal franchise can in no sense guarantee these principles, and may, indeed, impose a fiction of convent where in effect no liberty of choice exists."

"The rule of reason—to live according to natural laws—this is also the release of the imagination. We have two possibilities: to discover truth, and to create beauty. We make a profound mistake if we confuse these two activities, attempting to discover beauty and to create truth. If we attempt to create truth, we can only do so by imposing on our fellow-man an arbitrary and idealistic system which has no relation to reality; and if we attempt to discover beauty we look for it where it cannot be found—in reason, in logic, in experience. Truth is in reality, in the visible and tangible world of sensation; but beauty is in unreality, in the subtle and unconscious world of the imagination. If we confuse these two worlds of reality and imagination, then we breed not only national pride and religious fanaticism, but equally false philosophies and the dead art of the academies. We must surrender our minds to universal truth, but our imagination is free to dream; is as free as the dream; is the dream."

—Herbert Read: Poetry and Anarchism (1938)
Profile Image for Benjamin.
11 reviews
April 30, 2020
It's kinda like a greatest hits compilation of just the radio edit versions. This should probably be get as a coffee table piece rather than study material.
Profile Image for Andrew Nolan.
127 reviews5 followers
February 21, 2014
Not bad, an occasionally over edited greatest hits of anarchist thought.

The inclusion of some "proto-anarchist" writing is highly suspect and to me is merely anti-authoritarian and not particularly relevant to a history of anarchism unless your agenda is to somehow naturalize anarchism as a perennially natural state/ desire.

Much like Gellner and Hobsbawm's theorizing of nationalism my own inclinations are that anarchism requires the condition of modernity to exist and therefore can't convincingly be demonstrated to exist in any "true" form until relatively recently in human history.

Worth a read if you aren't familiar with every one in it, even if it's just so you can counteract awful contemporary North American lifestyle anarchist hippy ideals/ arguments that have little in common with anarchism as a political philosophy, and look more like smiley faced liberalism.
Profile Image for Constantinos Kalogeropoulos.
60 reviews16 followers
June 30, 2016
A wonderful collection of short excerpts from the proto-Anarchists and 'classical' Anarchists such as Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Landauer etc. Great introduction to anarchism.
Profile Image for Philip.
74 reviews10 followers
April 5, 2025
An excellent collection of anarchist ideas and writings that showcases that anarchism is not a monolith and there are many differences in opinion from how to fight to how to organise and more, but that doesn't stop us from coming together as one and attack capital and the state.
Profile Image for Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea.
540 reviews61 followers
November 28, 2008
I've picked this book up and put it down only to pick it up again so many times that it made my head spin! But I finished it. :) Which is exciting. A marvelous collection of short pieces about anarchism starting from 300 CE all the way up to the Spanish Civil War. It overflows with information. This is slightly problematic because you tend to read the same ideas over and over again. I seem to remember that somewhere in the middle of the book it got somewhat frustrating. Very interesting though.
Profile Image for Trey.
148 reviews
Read
February 8, 2009
Love it. A thorough examination of anarchism in its various forms throughout history... at least until the 1930s. Covers all kinds of topics: Anarchy and Art, Anarchy and Education, Anarchy and Women, Anarchy in various countries, etc. A necessary addition to any politics nerd's library.
Profile Image for Keana.
15 reviews5 followers
April 21, 2013
A thorough introduction to the variety of the philosophies of anarchism.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews

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