A revolutionary fairy tale for adults that makes sharpening your critique of capitalism fun. Why? follows the travels of a boy named Pochemu—“Why” in Russian—as he tries to understand the Tsar’s empire, capitalism, state violence, and more. The answers his rapid-fire questions elicit, which make less and less sense the deeper he probes, are just as ridiculous today as they were a century ago, and just as descriptive of a society gone wrong. When Pochemu eventually enters the Land of Anarchy, he is confronted by his own strangeness to its citizens, who study the bizarre customs he brings to their free society. This is a timeless tale of the ludicrousness of power and its deluded defenders. In this fable, a child’s innocent questions meet the lies used to justify a world of cruelty and inequality. The result is quasi-absurdist, political comedy. Abba and Wolf Gordin, Jewish anarchists in the Russian Revolution, wrote proletarian literature to enlighten and entertain. It’s a genre that no longer really exists, but given this delightful book, maybe it should.

From 1864 to 1880, socialists, communists, trade unionists, and anarchists synthesized a growing body of anticapitalist thought through participation in the First International—a body devoted to uniting left-wing radical tendencies of the time. Often remembered for the historic fights between Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, the debates and experimentation during the International helped to refine and focus anarchist ideas into a doctrine of international working class self-liberation. An unprecedented analysis of an often misunderstood history.

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was a member of the Frankfurt School, a leading figure of 1960s counterculture, and a fundamental character for the New Left. His ideas and theories, inspired by a rich fusion of Marxian and Freudian thought, exert a strong influence on contemporary thinking about activism, emancipation, and political resistance. He was also a student of Martin Heidegger in the late 1920s and engaged deeply with philosophy throughout his career. The Marcusean Mind is an outstanding survey and assessment of Marcuse's thought. Beginning with a thorough introduction to Marcuse's life and work, 39 chapters by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors are organized into five clear parts: Intellectual Ecosystems of Marcuse Reason and Sensibilities Futures and Utopias Contemporary Movements Counterrevolutions, Neoliberalism, and Fascism These sections each contain a short introduction, after which Marcusean ideas are brought to bear on many key contemporary debates and issues across the humanities, social sciences, and science and technology. Including a Foreword by Craig Calhoun and an Afterword by Douglas Kellner, The Marcusean Mind is a superb resource for anyone interested in Marcuse's thought and its legacy. It is valuable reading for students of contemporary political theory, activism, philosophy, sociology, media and cultural studies, critical legal studies, and race and gender studies.

Written by a Russian prince who renounced his title, this work promotes an anarchist market economy — a system of autonomous cooperative collectives. A century after its initial publication, it remains fresh and relevant.

In 1936, the people of Spain rose up, overthrew their masters and took power into their own hands. This detailed eyewitness account shows how ordinary people, inspired by the anarchist principles of equality and solidarity, organised freely to build a new world, whilst resisting a bloodthirsty fascist uprising.

The phenomenal life of Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno (1888-1934) provides the framework for this breakneck account of the downfall of the tsarist empire and the civil war that convulsed and bloodied Russia between 1917 and 1921. Mahkno and his people were fighting for a society "without masters or slaves, with neither rich nor poor." They acted towards that idea by establishing "free soviets." Unlike the soviets drained of all significance by the dictatorship of a one-party State, the "free soviets" became the grassroots organs of a direct democracy - a living embodiment of the free society - until they were betrayed, and smashed, by the Red Army. Delving into a vast array of documentation to which few other historians have had access, this study illuminates a revolution that started out with the rosiest of prospects but ended up utterly confounded. More than just the incredible exploits of a guerilla revolutionary par excellence, Skirda weaves the tale of a people, and the organizations and practices of anarchism, literally fighting for their lives.

Urges a reconceptualization of disability and citizenship to secure a rightful place for disabled persons in society. Essays from leading scholars in a diversity of fields offer critical perspectives on current citizenship studies, which still largely assume an ableist world. Placing historians in conversation with anthropologists, sociologists with literary critics, and musicologists with political scientists, this interdisciplinary volume presents a compelling case for reimagining citizenship that is more consistent, inclusive, and just, in both theory and practice. By placing disability front and center in academic and civic discourse, Civil Disabilities tests the very notion of citizenship and transforms our understanding of disability and belonging.

The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organises itself without authority, is always in existence. Through a wide-ranging analysis - drawing on examples from education, urban planning, welfare, housing, the environment, the workplace, and the family, to name but a few - Colin Ward demonstrates that the roots of anarchist practice are not so alien or quixotic as they might at first seem but lie precisely in the ways that people have always tended to organise themselves when left alone to do so.