Lesser Known Anarchists and Anarchistic Thinkers Reading List

Where applicable I will include links to the articles on the anarchist library or other online repositories. We should also remember the insights of the Invisible Committee:

It’s up to us to organize the encounters, the circulation, the understandings, the collusions between the local consistencies. The revolutionary task has partly become a task of translation. There is no Esperanto of revolt. It’s not up to the rebels to learn to speak anarchist; it’s up to the anarchists to become polyglot.

Several authors on this list are still in prison. Mumia Abu Jamal and other comrades of ours live behind bars. Some, like Russell Maroon Shoats and Carl Harp, died there. Many, if not most, are Black. While prison gives them time to ruminate and write theory for us who work in the sun, we should not forget that we owe them freedom, and should work to get it to them.

All divisions I make between categories of texts are mostly artificial, and done to make navigating the list easier.

European Anarchists and Anarchics

Pre-Classical (Pre-1864)

• The Red Virgin, Louise Michel
• On “Exchange”, Joseph Déjacque
• Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Étienne De La Boétie

Classical (1864-1945)

• Articles, Erich Mühsam
• The Liberation of Society From the State: What is Communist Anarchism?, Erich Mühsam
• The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Soviet System, Erich Mühsam
• Call to Socialism, Gustav Landauer
• The Case for Anarchism, Guy Aldred
• Representation and the State, Guy Aldred
• Colonization, Jean Grave
• Moribund Society and Anarchism, Jean Grave
• Anarchy and “Scientific” Communism, Luigi Fabbri
• Karl Marx’s Capital, Carlo Cafiero
• Action, Carlo Cafiero
• Our Revolution, Carlo Cafiero
• Anarchy and Communism, Carlo Cafiero
• Drei Aufsätze über den inneren Konflikt, Otto Gross [German]
• Über Destruktionssymbolik, Otto Gross [German]

The Russian Revolutions

• Historical Letters, Pëtr Lavrov
• Underground Russia, Sergei Stepniak
• What is to be done?, Nikolai Chernyshevsky
• Anarchism and Law, Alexei Borovoy
• Pages of Socialist History, Varlam Cherkezishvili (pdf)
• State Socialism, Jan Wacław Machajski
• The Kronstadt Commune, Ida Mett
• The Russian Peasants in the Revolution, Ida Mett
• The Unknown Revolution, Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, Voline
• Red Fascism, Voline
• The Bolshevik Myth, Alexander Berkman
• The Truth about Kronstadt, Stepan Petrichenko

Modern (Post-1945)

• For a Libertarian Communism, Daniel Guérin
• Society against the State, Pierre Clastres
• Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow, David Goodway
• Freedom — Not Licence, A. S. Neil
• Rethinking Anarchy, Carlos Taibo
• Collapse, Carlos Taibo

Mexican Rebels and Anarchists

• Our Word is Our Weapon, Subcommandante Marcos
• Whose Violence?, Emiliano Zapata
• Collected Works, Ricardo Flores Magón
• The Anxieties of Iron, Ricardo Flores Magón

Black Anarchists and Anarchics

• The Dragon and the Hydra, Russell Maroon Shoatz
• The Anarchism of Blackness, Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson
• Science and Social Ecology, Modibo Kadalie (video)
• Pan-African Social Ecology, Modibo Kadalie
• Beyond Nationalism But Not Without It, Ashanti Omowali Alston
• The Incomprehensible Black Anarchist Position, Hannibal Balagoon Shakur
• A Soldier’s Story, Kuwasi Balagoon
• Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, Mumia Abu Jamal
• Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mumia Abu Jamal

“North American” Anarchists and Anarchics

• Land and Freedom, Sever
• Police at the Borders, Abbey Volcano
• Indigenous Anarchic Hierarchies, Eepa
• Growing Up Absurd, Paul Goodman
• The Black Flag of Anarchism, Paul Goodman

Asian Anarchists and Anarchics

• A Battle for Life, Ba Jin
• The Feminist Manifesto, He Yin-Zhen
• In The Crossfire, Ngô Văn
• On Vietnam, Ngô Văn
• Death of an Epicurian, Jun Tsuji
• A Guidebook for the Revolt of the Idiots of the World: How to Create Space with Fun, Hajime Matsumoto [I’m unsure if this has been translated]

MENA Anarchists and Anarchics

• Anarchism Means Flying Forever, Soheil Arabi
• Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists, Patricia Crone [Secondary Text]

Names Without Texts

I apologize; I know their names, but works are harder to come by. When I find works I want to include above, I will. If you find texts by these comrades, be sure to send them to me via email; I’ll owe you one, for the little that’s worth.

• Liu Zhongshi aka Ray Jones
• Itō Noe
• Domingos Passos

I am also working on getting some texts translated, in particular the ones from Otto Gross. If you are able to help translate German psychoanalytic texts into English, please do get in touch.