Anarchist politics are at the heart of today’s most vibrant and radical social movements. From squatted social centres and community gardens to acts of sabotage and raucous summit blockades, anarchist groups and networks are spreading an ethos of direct action, non-hierarchical organizing and self-liberation that has redefined revolutionary struggle for the 21st century.

Anarchy Alive! is a fascinating, in-depth look at the practice and theory of contemporary anarchism. Uri Gordon draws on his activist experience and on interviews, discussions and a vast selection of recent literature to explore the activities, cultures and agendas shaping today’s explosive anti-authoritarian revival. Anarchy Alive! also addresses some of the most tense debates in the contemporary movement, using a theory based on practice to provocatively reshape anarchist discussions of leadership, violence, technology and nationalism.

This is the ideal book for anyone looking for a fresh, informed and critical engagement with anarchism, as a mature and dynamic political force in the age of globalisation.

Many of us wonder what we could possibly do to end oppression, exploitation, and injustice. People have studied revolutions and protest movements for centuries, but few have focused on prefigurative politics, the idea of 'building the new society within the shell of the old'.

Fed up with capitalism? Get organised and build the institutions of the future in radical unions and local communities. Tired of politicians stalling on climate change? Set up an alternative energy collective. Ready to smash racism and the patriarchy? Root them out in all areas of our lives, not just in 'high politics'.

This is the first book dedicated to prefigurative politics, explaining its history and examining the various debates surrounding it. How can collective decision-making be inclusive? In what ways are movements intersectional? Can prefigurative organisations scale up? It is a must-read for students of radical politics, anarchism, and social movements, as well as activists and concerned citizens everywhere.

This book takes examples from around the world, picking through history and anthropology, showing that people have, in different ways and at different times, demonstrated mutual aid, self-organization, autonomy, horizontal decision making, and so forth the principles that anarchy is founded on regardless of whether they called themselves anarchists or not. Too well documented to be strictly mythology, and too expansive to be strictly anthropology, this is an inspiring answer to the people who say that anarchists are a point-by-point introduction to how anarchy can and has actually worked.

[Also available for free at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works]

Before there was money, there was debt.

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

Bob Altemeyer—author of Atheists and The Authoritarian Specter —gives a readable analysis of the nature of authoritarianism and its current impact on American politics.

Full text available at theauthoritarians.org.

Everyone needs to love and be loved—even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving.

In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it’s hard for men to not comply—but hooks wants to help change that.

With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves—and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. A brave and astonishing work, The Will to Change is designed to help men reclaim the best part of themselves.

First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm. With a substantive new introduction on Freire's life and the remarkable impact of this book by writer and Freire confidant and authority Donaldo Macedo, this anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed will inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come.

Deschooling Society (1971) is a critical discourse on education as practised in modern economies. It is a book that brought Ivan Illich to public attention. Full of detail on programs and concerns, the book gives examples of the ineffectual nature of institutionalized education. Illich posited self-directed education, supported by intentional social relations in fluid informal arrangements.

While Malatesta was hiding from the police he regularly went to a café in Ancona, Italy. He had shaved off his usual beard but he was still taking a risk. Especially as this wasn't an anarchist café, but had a variety of customers including the local policeman. The conversations he had in this café became the basis for the dialogues that make up this book.

For the first time in English, Malatesta, in his usual commonsense and matter-of-fact style, sets out and critically analyses the arguments for and against anarchism. Translated by Paul Nursey-Bray, this is a classic defence of anarchism that anticipates the rise of nationalism, fascism and communism.

"Like all really good ideas, Anarchy is pretty simple when you get down to it-human beings are at their very best when they are living free of authority, deciding things among themselves rather than being ordered about." So begins the only modern anarchist classic.

Anarchy, A Graphic Guide is an account of people's attempts to build a world and live a life free of imposed authority. From the thirteenth century Free Spirits, to Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, from Noam Chomsky to the Zapatistas, Clifford Harper chronicles, in word and illustration, ordinary people's extraordinary efforts to overcome authoritarian social and economic conditions.

Harper's beautifully rendered drawings add a distinctive elegance to his writings. With entirely new illustrations—over 350—and prose, this handsome reissue can hardly be called a reprint. His celebrated style brings new life to history's forgotten and maligned heroes: the Diggers, William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, the Grimke Sisters, Francisco Ferrer, Buenaventura Durruti, the Kronstadt sailors, Kenneth Rexroth, Paul Goodman, and Carol Ehrlich. In addition, he addresses anarchism's relationship to broader movements, including art, feminism, environmentalism, abolitionism, labor, intellectualism, atheism, and education.

Em 2015 Eric Hazan publicou este livro, um texto que se atém ao despontar das revoltas. Trata-se de um verdadeiro amálgama de histórias reais em que se revela o olhar cirúrgico do autor arquivista que se atira em detalhes; sua mirada cartográfica, que busca localizar as revoltas urbanas; e seu olhar de editor, já que o livro é um verdadeira compilação de histórias insurrecionais praticamente desconhecidas, citando diversos textos editados ou reeditados pela La Fabrique, sua editora. Como é comum de sua obra, Hazan evita toda grande síntese, preferindo as conexões tênues. O livro possui uma natureza compósita, que se almeja uma forma aberta, em que prevalece a colagem.

É um livro de história? Sim e não. Sim, porque abrange cerca de 220 anos de motins, levantes, insurreições e revoluções, desde a tomada da Bastilha até a queda de Ben Ali e Mubarak, passando por junho de 1848, a Comuna de Paris, as Revoluções Russas de 1905 e 1917, assim como as da Alemanha, China, Espanha, Cuba, do município de Xangai, da insurreição zapatista, etc. Não, porque não encontramos neste livro as habituais descrições "objetivas", nem as considerações morais que comumente os acompanham.

O objetivo de Hazan é claramente político: identificar na história da revolução o que pode ser usado para superar o pessimismo prevalecente e pensar com intensidade sobre a ação por vir. Veremos que as maiores insurreições partem da ira do povo e não do borbulhar de ideias políticas; que depois da vitória o caos, sempre brandido como uma ameaça, nunca surge; que um equilíbrio de poderes desfavorável pode ser revertido um dia; que os episódios mais famosos são frequentemente construções lendárias.

Este livro nos compromete a não mais ler esta "história" com os olhos dos eternamente derrotados, a não mais ver nela um repertório de catástrofes, mas uma fonte viva de lições e exemplos. A formação de forças revolucionárias requer a reapropriação de nosso passado.

No texto, inédito em língua portuguesa, o autor apresenta diversas formas de resistência oferecidas pelo povo argelino ante a presença do médico-colonizador, como a desobediência ao tratamento, a recusa em explicar o que passava ou sentia, assim como a transformação dessa postura quando a Frente de Libertação Nacional (FLN) assumiu partes do cuidado da saúde do povo argelino em sua guerra de libertação contra o colonialismo francês, ocorrida entre os anos de 1954 a 1962.

"A publicação Bakunin & Nechayev, do historiador Paul Avrich, chega num momento importante, em que, ao menos num setor restrito do Brasil, se aprofundam as discussões sobre Mikhail A. Bakunin. Apesar de sucinto, este escrito contribui com a compreensão da complexa relação entre ambos os russos que, mesmo tendo durado pouco tempo, teve consequências marcantes e duradouras, não apenas na história do movimento da classe trabalhadora, mas também nas produções historiográficas que se debruçaram sobre Bakunin e sua obra."

— Felipe Corrêa

"Em resumo, enquanto Bakunin, quaisquer que sejam suas faltas, era essencialmente um libertário, Nechayev, quaisquer que sejam suas virtudes, era essencialmente um autoritário. Seus mentores não eram Fourier, Proudhon e Bakunin, mas Robespierre, Babeuf e Tkachev, cujos princípios jacobinistas ele levou às últimas dimensões. Longe de ser um anarquista, ele era um apóstolo da conveniência política, preocupado com os meios de conspiração e com organizações centralizadas, mais que com o objetivo de uma sociedade sem estado. Seu jacobinismo e maquiavelismo entravam em atrito com o espírito libertário, rodeando o anarquismo com uma aura de brutalidade e crueldade que eram alheios a o ideal de liberdade e dignidade humana, era maculado, rebaixado, e, por fim, distorcido ao irreconhecível."

— Paul Avrich