Organised Vengeance Called Justice

This book aims to establish the bond between Friedrich Nietzsche and the anarchists, through the apparatus of “elective affinity”, and to challenge the boundaries of several anarchist trends – especially “classical” and “post” anarchism – and “ideologies” like anarchism and libertarian Marxism. Moreover, it highlights the importance of reading Nietzsche politically, in a radical way, to understand his utility for the contemporary anarchist movement. The review of the literature concerning the Nietzsche-anarchy relationship shows the previously limited bibliography and stresses the possibility of exploring this connection, with the methodological help of Michael Löwy’s concept of “elective affinity”. The significance of this finding is that the relevant affinity may contribute to an alternative, to the dominant, perception of anarchism as an ideology. It may also designate its special features together with its weaknesses, meaning the objections of Nietzsche to certain aspects of the anarchist practices and worldview (violence, resentment, bad conscience), thus opening a whole new road of self-criticism for the anarchists of the twenty first century. In addition, the location and analysis of the elective affinity serves the debunking of the Nietzschean concepts used by conservative and right-wing readings in order to appropriate Nietzsche, and of the accusations that the German philosopher had unleashed against anarchists, which reveals his misunderstanding of anarchist politics. The final part of this book applies the whole analysis above on a Nietzschean reading of the December ’08 revolt in Athens based on the “Of the Three Metamorphoses” discourse from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, offering an alternative view of the events that shook Greece and also had an important global impact.

Before communism, anarchism and syndicalism were central to labour and the Left in the colonial and postcolonial world.Using studies from Africa,Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, this groundbreaking volume examines the revolutionary libertarian Left's class politics and anti-colonialism in the first globalization and imperialism(1870/1930).

Peter Kropotkin remains one of the best-known anarchist thinkers, and Words of a Rebel was his first libertarian book. Published in 1885 while he was in a French jail for anarchist activism, this collection of articles from the newspaper Le Revolté sees Kropotkin criticise the failings of capitalism and those who seek to end it by means of its main support, the state. Instead, he urged the creation of a mass movement from below that would expropriate property and destroy the state, replacing their centralised hierarchies with federations of self-governing communities and workplaces. Kropotkin’s instant classic included discussions themes and ideas he returned to repeatedly during his five decades in the anarchist movement. Unsurprisingly, Words of a Rebel was soon translated into numerous languages—including Italian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Russian, and Chinese—and reprinted time and time again. But despite its influence as Kropotkin’s first anarchist work, it was the last to be completely translated into English. This is a new translation from the French original by Iain McKay except for a few chapters previously translated by Nicolas Walter. Both anarchist activists and writers, they are well placed to understand the assumptions within and influences on Kropotkin’s revolutionary journalism. It includes all the original 1885 text along with the preface to the 1904 Italian as well as the preface and afterward to the 1919 Russian editions. In addition, it includes many articles on the labour movement written by Kropotkin for Le Revolté which show how he envisioned getting from criticism to a social revolution. Along with a comprehensive glossary and an introduction by Iain McKay placing this work within the history of anarchism as well as indicating its relevance to radicals and revolutionaries today, this is the definitive edition of an anarchist classic.

This was Peter Kropotkin's final book, in which he theorizes about the development of the modern state and how modern science and technology can assist in freeing working people from capitalism. First published in 1912 in France, sections of this book have been translated and published in English (as short books and pamphlets and journal articles), but never as a whole work as Kropotkin intended. More than 10 percent of this book has never before appeared in English. Introduced and annotated by Iain McKay.