“The great contribution of Žiga Vodovnik is that his writing rescues anarchism from its dogma, its rigidity, its isolation from the majority of the human race. He reveals the natural anarchism of our everyday lives, and in doing so, enlarges the possibilities for a truly human society, in which our imaginations, our compassion, can have full play.” —Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, from the Introduction At the end of the nineteenth century, the network of anarchist collectives represented the first-ever global antisystemic movement and the very center of revolutionary tumult. In this groundbreaking and magisterial work, Žiga Vodovnik establishes that anarchism today is not only the most revolutionary current but, for the first time in history, the only one left. According to the author, many contemporary theoretical reflections on anarchism marginalize or neglect to mention the relevance of the anarchy of everyday life. Given this myopic (mis)conception of its essence, we are still searching for anarchism in places where the chances of actually finding it are the smallest.

The last two decades have seen a re-birth of practices and principles that connect with the ‘soul’ of left-libertarianism, although they may not explicitly engage with the anarchist tradition. From practices of mapping and land-use planning to local protests and transnational social movements, this book explores a variety of case studies that trace the influences of, and affinities between, anarchist and geographic practice. The chapters explore the vast possibilities of inventive, exploratory libertarian practices from contemporary and historic contexts around the globe. They examine the ways in which various spatial practices have been compatible with left-libertarian principles, and explore the extent to which anarchists, neo-anarchists and libertarian autonomists have animated these waves of protest and forms of resistance. In an age that is desperately in need of critical new directions, this volume shows that a serious (re)turn toward anarchist thought and practice can challenge and inspire geographers to travel beyond their traditional frontiers of geographical praxis. .

How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.

From William Morris to Oscar Wilde to George Orwell left-libertarian thought has long been an important but neglected part of British cultural and political history. This work seeks to recover that indigenous anarchist tradition. It argues that a recovered anarchist tradition could be a touchstone for contemporary political radicals.

Our epoch is an epoch of decadence. Bourgeois-christian-plebeian civilization arrived at the dead end of its evolution a long time ago. Democracy has arrived! But under the false splendor of democratic civilization, higher spiritual values have fallen, shattered. Willful strength, barbarous individuality, free art, heroism, genius, poetry have been scorned, mocked, slandered. And not in the name of "I", but of the "collective". Not in the name of "the unique one", but of society. Thus christianity - condemning the primitive and wild force of the virgin instinct - killed the vigorously pagan "concept" of the joy of the earth. Democracy - its offspring - glorified itself making the justification for this crime and reveling in its grim and vulgar enormity. Already we knew it! Christianity had brutally planted the poisoned blade in the healthy, quivering flesh of all humanity; it had goaded a cold wave of darkness with mystically brutal fury to dim the serene and festive exultation of the dionysian spirit of our pagan ancestors. In one cold evening, winter fatally fell upon a warm midday of summer. It was christianity that, substituting the phantasm of "god" for the vibrant reality of "I", declared itself the fierce enemy of the joy of living and avenged itself knavishly on earthly life. With christianity Life was sent to mourn in the frightful abysses of the most bitter renunciations; she was pushed toward the glacier of disavowal and death. And from this glacier of disavowal and death, democracy was born. Thus democracy - the mother of socialism - is the daughter of christianity. Here is your full description. Just read the book, you don't need a description.

In the nineteenth century anarchists were accused of conspiracy by governments afraid of revolution, but in the current century various “conspiracy theories” suggest that anarchists are controlled by government itself. The Illuminati were a network of intellectuals who argued for self-government and against private property, yet the public is now often told that they were (and are) the very group that controls governments and defends private property around the world. Intervening in such misinformation, Lagalisse works with primary and secondary sources in multiple languages to set straight the history of the Left and illustrate the actual relationship between revolutionism, pantheistic occult philosophy, and the clandestine fraternity. Exploring hidden correspondences between anarchism, Renaissance magic, and New Age movements, Lagalisse also advances critical scholarship regarding leftist attachments to secular politics. Inspired by anthropological fieldwork within today’s anarchist movements, her essay challenges anarchist atheism insofar as it poses practical challenges for coalition politics in today’s world. Studying anarchism as a historical object, Occult Features of Anarchism also shows how the development of leftist theory and practice within clandestine masculine public spheres continues to inform contemporary anarchist understandings of the “political,” in which men’s oppression by the state becomes the prototype for power in general. Readers behold how gender and religion become privatized in radical counterculture, a historical process intimately linked to the privatization of gender and religion by the modern nation-state.

A gripping and sensational tale of violence, alcohol, and taxes, The Whiskey Rebellion uncovers the radical eighteenth-century people’s movement, long ignored by historians, that contributed decisively to the establishment of federal authority. In 1791, on the frontier of western Pennsylvania, local gangs of insurgents with blackened faces began to attack federal officials, beating and torturing the tax collectors who attempted to collect the first federal tax ever laid on an American product—whiskey. To the hard-bitten people of the depressed and violent West, the whiskey tax paralyzed their rural economies, putting money in the coffers of already wealthy creditors and industrialists. To Alexander Hamilton, the tax was the key to industrial growth. To President Washington, it was the catalyst for the first-ever deployment of a federal army, a military action that would suppress an insurgency against the American government. With an unsparing look at both Hamilton and Washington, journalist and historian William Hogeland offers a provocative, in-depth analysis of this forgotten revolution and suppression. Focusing on the battle between government and the early-American evangelical movement that advocated western secession, The Whiskey Rebellion is an intense and insightful examination of the roots of federal power and the most fundamental conflicts that ignited—and continue to smolder—in the United States.