Basic Anarchist Reading List?

What books would you recommand as basic introduction to anarchist views, thought, and theory?

Start with the Anarchist FAQ and libcom guide.
For propaganda type of work, look for Emma's essays.
You can try Bakunin, he's not too difficult.
Check out the Anarchist achives.

I find No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism is a good intro to basically everything anarchist.

Noam Chomskies On ANarchism is pretty good.

Shit, you just initiated the Rafiq-trap.

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Anarchism: A beginner's guide is pretty good if you're really a beginner. An Anarchist FAQ is also extremely helpful, although not too well written.

Of coarse I did. But he's the most known and respected anarchist around, and its a pretty good book.

Chomsky on Anarchism.

Any Emma Goldman book.

Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin

Pretty much all you'll need to know

In addition to the resources already mentioned, I would definitely check out Peter Marshall's Demanding the Impossible. If you only read one book about Anarchism, that should be it.

Yeah, some books about Anarchism written by Anarchists might be a start.

Pretty much anything by -
Rudolf Rocker
Alexander Berkman
Grigory Maximov
Peter Kropotkin
Emma Goldman
Errico Malatesta
- all of these made important contributions to the development of Anarchist thought as it manifested itself through the 20th century.

Then maybe stuff about Makhno and Durruti might be in order.

I wouldn't recommend Bakunin, personally, I don't think he's very good, though maybe he and Proudhon are necessary to get an idea of how Anarchism developed; and I wouldn't recommend Chomsky as I don't think he's an Anarchist.

But Marshall's book 'Demanding the Impossible', as NGNM85 mentioned, is very good on the development of Anarchist thought. I'd snag a copy of that, and/or George Woodcock's 'Anarchism: a history of libertarian ideas and movemnents' from 1962 as a decent introduction to the ideas and many of the personalities involved in the development of Ananrchism over the last century-and-a-half. Almost anything by Paul Avrich on the history of Anarchism in Russia is readable and well-researched.

Read the Anarchist FAQ. Personally? I recommend the following works to any budding anarchist: What is Property by Proudhon and The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin. Some stuff beyond that? Depends on your interests. l suggest looking at Bookchin's Social Ecology book(I can't remember the full title. If you're religious you might want to look at Tolstoy, Ellul(sp?), or Starhawk for example.

There's a lot of stuff out there that caters to a whole host of ideas in the anarchist movement. Kevin Carson is a pretty good mutualist writer based on the things I have read from him so there is inspiration there if you're more of an individualist. (I'm a green anarcho-communist so I am pretty biased)

-Anarchy by Malatesta
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/mala...xx/anarchy.htm)
-Malatesta's three works regarding the labor movement/syndicalism/unions and anarchism
-Armed Joy by Bonanno
(http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/...Armed_Joy.html)
-At Daggers Drawn...
(http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/...e_Critics.html)

Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism


Probably the best book written about anarchism in the modern era, despite the author's clearly biased tone in the book. They have their own viewpoint and they admit it in the book. But it's a wealth of information. Read that and Alfredo Bonanno and the Invisible Committee (not anarchist but close enough I guess) and become a hipster armed struggle workerist.

"Anarchy" - Errico Malatesta
"The ABC of Communist-Anarchism" - Alexander Berkman
"At the Cafe" - Errico Malatesta
"Syndicalism" - William Z. Foster (not anarchist, but very relevant to later anarcho-syndicalist unions)
"Syndicalism - For and Against" - Pierre Monatte & Errico Malatesta
"Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice" - Rudolf Rocker
"Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism" - Michael Schmidt & Lucien van der Walt
"The Conquest of Bread" - Peter Kropotkin

Kropotkin and Malatesta are my two favourite sources for Anarchist writings, I see Malatesta's Anarchy has been mentioned, I think his A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between Two Workers is also quite good, done in an FAQ sort of format, and provides brief but good answers to most questions, and Kropotkin's Anarchism in the The Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1910 gives a good basic overview of Anarchism and its history while being intended for a non-Anarchist audience (I believe). Some of Bakunin's stuff is alright too; The Capitalist System is a pretty good critique and Marxism, Freedom and the State has some interesting stuff

There's things like "The Conquest of Bread" as well (also by Kropotkin) if you want something longer, but I think most articles/essays/pamphlets/etc. are best for a beginner, they give a lot of things to think about in only a few pages or so, head over to Anarchy Archives for most of the major works on Anarchism

Splitted all of the discussion on "anarcho"-capitalism of to the OI forum proper. If we considerd that b.s. actually anarchism we would not restrict its adherents...