Librarian picks
a list of some anarchist librarians’ favorite and recommended texts on the library

Elias

1. Green Anarchist

   Of GANDALF trial infamy. This publication is on the library's wishlist

2. Green Anarchy

   An anti-civilization journal of theory and action. GA was anthologized as Uncivilized

3. Black Seed

   Songs of Creation & Destruction. Anthologized as Not on Any Map and Where the Absence Is

4. Do or Die!

   Voices from the ecological resistance, 1993-2003. Desert followed. Anthologized as Cracks in a Grey Sky

5. Return Fire

   ANTI-AUTHORITY, DAILY REVOLT, INDIVIDUAL WILL, DE-CIVILISATION

6. AJODA

   Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. Selected readings at Immediatism

7. The Anvil Review

   Anarchists writing about popular culture for a broader audience. Anthologized as The Spectacle of Society

8. Hakim Bey

   1945-2022. Long time contributor to Fifth Estate and many more

9. Fredy Perlman's The Strait

   From the author of Against His-story, Against Leviathan! Part II coming soon

10. I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite!

    Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition book edited by the late great John Moore

11. Little Black Cart

    "An anarchist project is one that is informed by the dynamic spirit of anarchy and treats it as the living, breathing entity it is."

12. Aragorn!

    Publisher, writer, and host to a thousand indignities. Also host to The Brilliant Podcast

@ThatAnarchistDyke

1. Emma Goldman, Anarchism And Other Essays.

   This book is the perfect introduction to anarchism through the queer and feminist lens; Goldman’s critiques of marriage and amatonormativity ring true in today’s anti-assimilationist movement, especially given the context of her lesbian love affairs. Adapted from Goldman’s speeches, this text also elucidates the feminist side of classical anarchism.

2. Fray Baroque and Tegan Eanelli, Queer Ultraviolence.

   This anthology of the Queers Bash Back tendency, written shortly after the first wave of Bash Back but prior to the 2023 convergence, has never been more relevant to both anarchism and the broader social justice movement. Baroque and Eanelli tell the story of an insurrectionary and collectively minded answer to queer liberation, while also presenting queer and trans perspectives on the issue of sabotage and disruption in social movements.

3. Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs Of An Anarchist.

   Berkman’s prison memoirs, while providing a compelling look at classical anarchism, are also surprisingly focused on gender, masculinity, and queerness. Berkman discusses his experiences with same-gender love affairs in prison, cultural perspectives on masculinity, and his own internalized anti-queerness. This text is a must-read for anarchists and queer liberationists alike.

4. Kim Kelly, Anarchy: What It Is and Why Pop Culture Loves It.

   Anarchism is often stereotyped as a movement that’s exclusively loved by angry queer teenagers—but as it turns out, angry queer teenagers are one of the populations that need it most! Kelly’s analysis is accessible, theory-informed, and fiercely intersectional; anarchists of all ages can get a lot out of this.

5. Laboria Cuboniks, Xenofeminism.

   Feminism? And pro-technology sentiment? And anti-capitalism? These things really don’t sound like they’d go together, but Xenofeminism brings this together in a perspective that merges transhumanism, queerness, and intersectional feminism. Embracing alienation as an aspect of liberation, this text is perfect for anyone interested in social justice, STEM, or both.

6. Peter Gelderloos, Anarchy Works.

   Rather than adopting the theoretical focus of a traditional Anarchism 101, this text by Peter Gelderloos answers the common objections (“BUT WHO TAKES OUT THE TRASH?”) with historical examples from real-life anarchist societies. Perfect for the anarcho-curious person in your life, Anarchy Works does not seek to be a blueprint for an ideal future society, but instead inspires readers to prefigure anarchy in the here and now.

7. Voltairine De Cleyre, Those Who Marry Do Ill.

   The anarcha-feminist free love debate...it’s a thing. This text by De Cleyre offers an individualist anarchist perspective on this question, standing in sharp contrast to Goldman’s critique of monogamy as upholding both patriarchy and private property, while ending up at the same ideal of free love.

8. Julia Tanenbaum, To Destroy Domination In All Its Forms.

   You’ve probably heard of Goldman, De Cleyre, and Parsons--but did you know that anarchafeminism flourished in the 70s and 80s, at the same time as early gay liberation? This zine by Julia Tanenbaum covers all this and more, offering an intersectional and untold (until now) history of anarchafeminism.

9. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.

   In much of her speculative fiction, Le Guin ponders the price of utopia; this short story does so symbolically. Whether you’re a fan of speculative fiction or simply a person seeking to critique hierarchy, this text has plenty to analyse, critique, and take inspiration from.

10. Cindy Milstein, Anarchism And Its Aspirations.

    This introduction to anarchism takes a distinctly prefigurative approach, treating anarchism not as a blueprint for a future society but a set of liberatory ethics to be lived out in one’s day-to-day life. Taking a radically queer and feminist perspective, Milstein inspires readers to move beyond traditional organizing and transform the way we relate to one another.

Magsalin

1. carla bergman and Nick Montgomery, Joyful Militancy.

   This text is a lodestar for my affinity group. It describes a novel way of approaching politics as something joyful, rather than something rigid radicalism that where politics is anxiety-inducing, filled with suspicion and self-righteousness. This book attempts to undo rigid radicalism in our lives and push for something more joyful.

2. Murray Bookchin, Post-scarcity Anarchism, particularly its chapter “Listen, Marxist!”

   This text was solarpunk long before solarpunk was systematized as a genre. It describes a way of thinking about technology and how it could be used to liberatory — and indeed, post-scarce — ends. The essay “Listen, Marxist!” is of particular note in the book as it is a powerful critique against the rigidity of the old Marxisms. My favorite part about it is the suggestion that liberation comes from workers undoing their workerness.

3. Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness, Life Without Law: An introduction to anarchist politics.

   This is one of the best contemporary and post-classical introductions to anarchist politics. It manages to briefly look at both classical and post-classical anarchist histories and politics to describe what anarchy and anarchism means today.

4. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto.

   While not an anarchist text (at all), this text is a lodestar for transfemninism. Even if one is not trans, this manifesto’s cry to embrace affinity instead of common identity is incredibly helpful for anarchists fighting for freedom in a world mired by identity politics (nationalism, religion, race, gender, etc.). Rather than uniting based on identity, we ought unite on the basis of affinity, that we struggle for freedom together on that basis rather than a constructed identity that might not even really exist.

5. The Invisible Committe, To our friends.

   The second in the Invisible Committee’s trilogy of works, this text discusses the aftermath of the vindication of the Invisible Committee’s previous text, The Coming Insurrection. It discusses interesting concepts like the theory of the permanent crisis and how friendship and freedom are intricately connected. We are free precisely because we have ties and because we are linked to a reality greater than ourselves.

6. Gilles Dauvé, When Insurrections Die, 1917–1937.

   This is one of Dauvé’s more popular essays on communization. While Dauvé is a communization theorist and not an anarchist, his text deals with hard questions such as when anti-fascism becomes counterrevolutionary, such as during the Spanish Revolution when the CNT worked with the Republic which ended in tragedy. I particularly enjoyed its discussion of revolution: that we cannot think of revolution as a war between fronts, for that conceives of proletarian power in bourgeois terms. Rather, proletarian power and revolution is precisely proletarians destroying themselves as commodities and subverting the social relationships that mark us as commodities.

7. Ediciones Inéditas, Ediciones Inéditas Anthology.

   This text combines ultraleft communization currents with anarchism, developing an “anarchy and communism” current rather than an “anarcho-communist” current. Communization as a current developed libertarian and anarchistic positions, though in the language of left communism. This text brings these insights into anarchism in an easy to read form. It brings ultraleft ideas such as the self-abolition of the proletariat into anarchist theory. This text also looks into non-white notions of anti-work, which is highly appreciated in a largely white literature.

8. David Graeber, Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!.

   This is another excellent post-classical introduction to anarchism from an anthropological lens. While this text isn’t explicitly anthropological, it does bring Graeber’s anthropological lens through looking at the anarchy in the everyday. We practice many anarchist concepts everyday. Anarchism springs forth from where ever we seek it. This text shows how it’s always possible to act in an anarchist way.

9. Proletarios Revolucionarios, The Self-Abolition of the Proletariat As the End of the Capitalist World (or why the current revolt doesn’t transform into revolution).

   This is a bit of an obscure ultraleft text, but is something I think is of importance for anarchists today. It describes how the proletariat is also the class of capital just as the bourgeoisie precisely because they act to produce and reproduce capitalism whenever they continue to work for wages and pay rent. The proletariat can only become a revolutionary class if it struggles against proletarianization, against its own class reproduction. Therefore, the abolition of capitalism lies in the self-abolition of the proletariat.

10. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.

    Not only is this a brilliant and modern classic in political science that takes a rare libertarian perspective rare in comparative politics, it also brings a lot of highly useful concepts and theories for anarchists. Scott is not himself an anarchist — he’s some kind of centrist libertarian — but he develops concepts coming from an “anarchist squint” to see how the state orders everyday realities. He describes the ideology of belief in state capacity for social change as “high modernism” which attempts to render reality into “legible” parts that can then be manipulated by the state apparatus. However, how the state renders the world as legible also erases much of the dynamism of the world and renders invisible many nuances, inevitably so in minorities like minority genders and indigenous peoples.

11. Errico Malatesta, An Anarchist Programme.

    Most of the items on this list are post-classical anarchism, because unlike Marxism, anarchism does not deify central cannonical texts. I include Malatesta’s Programme here because it is an excellent representative of the politics of classical anarchism. It clearly describes what the classical anarchists wanted and how they intend to carry out their program.

12. Fredy Perlman, The Reproduction of Daily Life.

    Emblematic of Perlman’s earlier engagements with Marxism, this text is an easy and accessible introduction to theories on social reproduction and alienation. Perlman describes how workers produce and reproduce the world around them and thereby producing and reproducing the very structures that oppress them. While Perlman does not discuss the self-abolition of the proletariat in this text, understanding these mechanisms of the social reproduction of the proletariat is a point of departure for understanding how the proletariat could interrupt their proletarianization and thereby freeing themselves from the world of capital.

Kimmy

1. Serafinski, Blessed is the flame

   A short piece that can emphasizing the connection between nihilism and anarchism. This text is easily to read and also fun for me, because its explaining how naturaly we as human adopting nihilism view when facing the situation when we only have choice between die without resistance or resisting and the we die.

2. Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro Social Anarchism and Organisation

   This document containing the theoritical aspect and history of the Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro and especifismo theory. This document can be a framework that easily to understand to anarchist organizer about starting a revolutionary anarchist organization.

Rocinante

1. Sophia Nachalo and Yarostan Vochek, Letters of Insurgents 1976, Black and Red Press

   Some of the most beautiful letters I have ever read. I read the book twice, which is super rare for me. Fredy Perlman is one of the all-time greatest anarchist writers and thinkers.

2. Lorraine Perlman, Having Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman’s Fifty Years 1989, Black and Red Press

   The Lorraine and Fredy stories. Also a nice way to preview the larger Perlman texts by reading the background about it first or after.

3. Anonymous, At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics

   The secret is to really begin.

4. Aragorn! Stories of the Bear and Racoon People

   Some anarchist text for the kids!

5. Publicación Madre Tierra ¡Punky Mauri Presente!: 10 Years After the Death in Action of Mauricio Morales

   The years go by, but the dead are still with us.

6. Luciano Pitronello The Prison Letters of Luciano “Tortuga” Pitronello 2012-2013

   The abyss does not stop us.

7. Alejandro de Acosta The Impossible, Patience: Critical Essays 2007-2013 2014, Little Black Cart

   How Slogans end.

8. Anonymous, author category Anonymous

   Currently 611 texts and growing by the most prolific of anarchist authors.

9. Seaweed Land and Freedom: An Open Invitation 2013, Black Powder Press

   Challenging the entire notion of what society! is.

10. dot matrix, Anarchy 101 2012, Little Black Cart

    Crowd sourced introductory texts for all the anarchists in your life.