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Anarchy (1891)

Author(s)

Errico Malatesta

Vernon Richards (translator)

“We struggle for anarchy, and for socialism, because we believe that anarchy and socialism must be realised immediately, that is to say that in the revolutionary act we must drive govern­ment away, abolish property and entrust public services, which in this context will include all social life, to the spontaneous, free, not official, not authorised efforts of all interested parties and of all willing helpers.

Of course there will be difficulties and drawbacks; but they will be resolved, and they will only be resolved in an anarchist way, by means, that is, of the direct intervention of the interested parties and by free agreements.”

Errico Malatesta

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The Anarchist Revolution : Polemical Articles 1924-1931 (1995)

Author(s)

Errico Malatesta

Vernon Richards (editor)

Contents

“Organisation, which after all only means cooperation and solidarity in practice, is a natural condition, necessary to the running of society; and it is an unavoidable fact which involves everyone, whether in human society in general or in any grouping of people joined by a common aim.

As human beings cannot live in isolation, indeed could not really become human beings and satisfy their moral and material needs unless they were part of society and cooperated with their fellows, it is inevitable that those who lack the means, or a sufficiently developed awareness, to organise freely with those with whom they share common interests and sentiments, must submit to the organisations set up by others, who generally form the ruling class or group and whose aim is to exploit the labour of others to their own advantage.

And the age-long oppression of the masses by a small number of the privileged has always been the outcome of the inability of the greater number of individuals to agree and to organise with other workers on production and enjoyment of rights and benefits and for defence against those who seek to exploit and oppress them.

Anarchism emerged as a response to this state of affairs, its basic principle being free organisation, set up and run according to the free agreement of its members without any kind of authority; that is, without anyone having the right to impose their will on others. And it is therefore obvious that anarchists should seek to apply to their personal and political lives this same principle upon which, they believe, the whole of human society should be based.”

Errico Malatesta

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An Anarchist Programme (1920)

Author(s)

Errico Malatesta

Contents

“We want to change radically [the] state of affairs. And since all these ills have their origin in the struggle between men, in the seeking after well-being through one’s own efforts and for oneself and against everybody, we want to make amends, replacing hatred by love, competition by solidarity, the individual search for personal well-being by the fraternal cooperation for the well-being of all, oppression and imposition by liberty, the religious and pseudo-scientific lie by truth.

Therefore:

1. Abolition of private property in land, in raw materials and the instruments of labour, so that no one shall have the means of living by the exploitation of the labour of others, and that everybody, being assured of the means to produce and to live, shall be truly independent and in a position to unite freely among themselves for a common objective and according to their personal sympathies.

2. Abolition of government and of every power which makes the law and imposes it on others : therefore abolition of monarchies, republics, parliaments, armies, police forces, magistratures and any institution whatsoever endowed with coercive powers.

3. Organisation of social life by means of free association and federations of producers and consumers, created and modified according to the wishes of their members, guided by science and experience, and free from any kind of imposition which does not spring from natural needs, to which everyone, convinced by a feeling of over, riding necessity, voluntarily submits.

4. The means of life, for development and well-being, will be guaranteed to children and all who are prevented from providing for themselves.

5. War on religions and all lies, even if they shelter under the cloak of science. Scientific instruction for all to advanced level.

6. War on rivalries and patriotic prejudices. Abolition of frontiers ; brotherhood among all peoples.

7. Reconstruction of the family, as will emerge from the practice of love, freed from every legal tie, from every economic and physical oppression, from every religious prejudice.

This is our ideal.”

Errico Malatesta

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At the Café : Conversations on Anarchism (1922)

Author(s)

Errico Malatesta

Paul Nursey-Bray (editor, translator)

Contents

“These dialogues of Malatesta represent not just a major contribu­tion to anarchist political theory, but a significant historical docu­ment. Written over a period of 23 years they are a commentary on turbulent times and vital historical events, covering as they do an epoch distinguished in particular by left-wing agitation and organisation across Europe.

During the time spanned by these ruminations on anarchism the world witnessed the Second International, the rise of Bolshevism, the First World War, the birth of Fascism and the Russian Revolutions, both of 1904 and 1917. Without any direct allusion to any of these events the dialogues engage in a lively debate with many of the issues that they raise.

In a real sense Malatesta has crafted anarchist theory into a run­ning commentary on his times. It is a work of intelligence, style and real artistry.”

Paul Nursey-Bray

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The Next Revolution (2015)

Author(s)

Murray Bookchin

Debbie Bookchin (editor)

Blair Taylor (editor)

Ursula K. Le Guin (foreword)

Contents

“Murray Bookchin spent a lifetime opposing the rapacious ethos of grow-or-die capitalism. The nine essays in this book represent the culmination of that labor: the theoretical underpinning for an egalitarian and directly democratic ecological society, with a practical approach for how to build it.

He critiques the failures of past movements for social change, resurrects the promise of direct democracy and, in the last essay in this book, sketches his hope of how we might turn the environmental crisis into a moment of true choice—a chance to transcend the paralyzing hierarchies of gender, race, class, nation, a chance to find a radical cure for the radical evil of our social system.

Reading it, I was moved and grateful, as I have so often been in reading Murray Bookchin. He was a true son ofthe Enlightenment in his respect for clear thought and moral responsibility and in his honest, uncompromising search for a realistic hope.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (Foreword)

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Between Earth and Empire : From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community (2019)

Author(s)

John P. Clark

Peter Marshall (Foreword)

Contents

“Having already edited a collection of his writings, Clark is inspired by the French nineteenth-century geographer Elisée Reclus, whom he claims as an anarchist ‘discovered the Earth’ and opposed, as Clark does, all forms of social and ecological domination.

He recognizes that humanity is an integral part of nature; indeed, in his words ‘nature becoming self-conscious’

(‘L’Homme est la Nature prenant conscience d’elle-même’).

In other words, the Earth is in ourselves and we are the Earth.

He conceived anarchy as a critique of class, patriarchal, racial, technological, and state domination while recognizing past and present human domination of other species and nature itself. His form of “anarchography,” which Clark approves, is at once the writing of the universal and of the particular, of the ecosystem and of the stream.

He was prophetic in seeing the possibility of an egalitarian, libertarian, and communitarian society based on mutual aid as well as a process of globalization from below in which nature and humanity become one.”

Peter Marshall

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Our History is the Future (2019)

Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
Author(s)

Nick Estes

Contents

“Thanksgiving is the quintessential origin story a settler nation tells itself : ‘peace’ was achieved between Natives and settlers at Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Mayflower pilgrims established a colony in 1620, over roast turkey and yams.

To consummate the wanton slaughter of some 700 Pequots, in 1637 the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, William Bradford, proclaimed that Thanksgiving Day be celebrated ‘in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won’.

Peace on stolen land is borne of genocide.

[…] But as colonialism changes throughout time, so too does resistance to it. By drawing upon earlier struggles and incorporating elements of them into their own experience, each generation continues to build dynamic and vital traditions of resistance. Such collective experiences build up over time and are grounded in specific Indigenous territories and nations.”

Nick Estes

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The Struggle against the State & Other Essays (1996)

Author(s)

Nestor Makhno

Alexandre Skirda (editor)

Contents

“The fact that the modern State is the organizational form of an authority founded upon arbitrariness and vio­lence in the social life of toilers is independent of whether it may be ‘bourgeois’ or ‘proletarian’.

It relies upon op­pressive centralism, arising out of the direct violence of a minority deployed against the majority. In order to enforce and impose the legality of its system, the State resorts not only to the gun and money, but also to potent weapons of psychological pressure. With the aide of such weapons, a tiny group of politicians enforces psychological repression of an entire society, and, in particular, of the toiling masses, conditioning them in such a way as to divert their atten­tion from the slavery instituted by the State.

[…] The final and utter liquidation of the State can only come to pass when the struggle of the toilers is oriented along the most libertarian lines possible, when the toilers will themselves determine the structures of their social ac­tion. These structures should assume the form of organs of social and economic self-direction, the form of free ‘anti­authoritarian’ soviets.

The revolutionary workers and their vanguard – the anarchists – must analyze the nature and structure of these soviets and specify their revolutionary functions in advance. It is upon that, chiefly, that the posi­tive evolution and development of anarchist ideas in the ranks of those who will accomplish the liquidation of the State on their own account in order to build a free society, will be dependent.”

Nestor Makhno

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The Ecology of Freedom (1982)

Author(s)

Murray Bookchin

Contents

“A hierarchical mentality fosters the renunciation of the pleasures of life. It justifies toil, guilt, and sacrifice by the ‘inferiors’, and pleasure and the indulgent gratification of virtually every caprice by their ‘supe­riors’.

[…] This mentality permeates our individual psyches in a cumulative form up to the present day – not merely as capitalism but as the vast history of hierarchical society from its inception. Unless we explore this history, which lives actively within us like earlier phases of our individual lives, we will never be free of its hold.

We may eliminate social injustice, but we will not achieve social freedom. We may elimi­nate classes and exploitation, but we will not be spared from the tram­mels of hierarchy and domination. We may exorcize the spirit of gain and accumulation from our psyches, but we will still be burdened by gnawing guilt, renunciation, and a subtle belief in the ‘vices’ of sensu­ousness.”

Murray Bookchin

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Democratic Confederalism (2011)

Author(s)

Abdullah Öcalan

Contents

“In contrast to a centralist and bureaucratic understanding of administration and exercise of power, confederalism poses a type of political self-administration where all groups of the society and all cultural identities can express themselves in local meetings, general conventions and councils. This understanding of democracy opens the political space to all strata of the society and allows for the formation of different and diverse political groups. In this way it also advances the political integration of the society as a whole.

Politics becomes a part of everyday life.

Without politics the crisis of the state cannot be solved since the crisis is fuelled by a lack of representation of the political society. Terms like federalism or self administration as they can be found in liberal democracies need to be conceived anew.
Essentially, they should not be conceived as hierarchical levels of the administration of the nation-state but rather as central tools of social expression and participation. This, in turn, will advance the politicization of the society. We do not need big theories here, what we need is the will to lend expression to the social needs by strengthening the autonomy of the social actors structurally and by creating the conditions for the organization of the society as a whole.

The creation of an operational level where all kinds of social and political groups, religious communities, or intellectual tendencies can express themselves directly in all local decision-making processes can also be called participative democracy. The stronger the participation the more powerful is this kind of democracy.

While the nation-state is in contrast to democracy, and even denies it, democratic confederalism constitutes a continuous democratic process.”

Abdullah Öcalan

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