If you are a newcomer, I am not a good or gracious first place to be. In real life, this is alternatively true in the sense I am happy to talk, share resources, etc. My writings here are not that for you, but that’s because I am simply not willing to reinvent the wheel. Nobody needs to do a reworking of Errico Malatesta’s L’Anarchia (1891), it serves its purpose wonderfully, and I’d be wary of anyone attempting to do so, especially when you have so-called anarchists believing there aren’t good definitions of a state (there are).
On my journey to anarchy, I was met with the worst recommendations of literature. Emma Goldman, Kropotkin, Bakunin, these were not actually good recommendations for a person with zero frame of reference, with zero idea of anarchism. They may be useful or insightful in certain ways, they may have even been reasons for people getting into anarchism, but they are typically bad recommendations.
I started identifying myself as an anarchist after I read Daniel Guérin’s L’anarchisme: de la doctrine à l’action (the 1970 English translation), but the best introductory work I’d read and now recommend is Malatesta.
I literally recommend all of his writings, he’s not only on the dot for most things, but his analysis is prescient into the world we’re in now. With a few key word changes, you’d think he was writing about the now.
With that said though, I don’t think I was a “good” anarchist by my own standards. I’d read a lot of different books, many I won’t recommend here because I think there is a specific political moment I want to center on.
I became an anarchist I wanted to become when I began to read Alfredo M. Bonnano and internalizing his works. As someone who had identified as an abolitionist once, reading through “And We Will Still Be Ready to Storm The Heavens Another Time: Against Amnesty” This idealized version of myself continued as I absorbed writings assembled in the Insurrectional Anarchism reader by Ill Will (who I am indifferent toward, but the authors and writings within this compilation were useful to me).
Then I had a friend rant about Serafinski’s Blessed is the Flame. I had attempted reading it once, but it didn’t take hold and I thought the rant was ungenerous, lumping in a lot of emotional response rather than meeting the reading where it was at, which I felt was incredibly more nuanced than they were giving it credit for.
In my reading of it, I was like, wow this is incredibly appropriate for how I am experiencing the work right now, and I think it’s correct on multiple levels. This then set me to then read baeden. Then I re-read it. Then I re-read it. Then I re-read Blessed is the Flame. I then dove into Aragorn!’s Nihilism, Anarchy, and the 21st Century.
I found myself on a hamster-in-the-wheel thought process about anarcho-nihlism. I identify with nihilism and the only impulse holding me back from calling myself an anarchist-nihilist is that I think I lack the ability to be the nihilist I want to be. That may or may not make sense, I just would hate to call myself an anarchist-nihilist and be a lackluster one at that. It’s all ready enough being an anarchist.
What I do know is more than a decade of being involved in any kind of political affair, I’ve never found myself with a framework until the past few years where I am confident exactly in what should be done now.
I don’t even know if I outright recommend these readings to you depending on your framework. If you barely understand anarchism, I am even less confident about advocating for you to read nihilist or insurrectionary texts, but I think if you have a foundational understanding of anarchism or are an anarchist, then I’d push you on it.
In list format for anarchism generally and mind you I am not saying I have full 1:1 agreements, rather I am more interested in providing you a frame of reference.
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daniel-guerin-anarchism-from-theory-to-practice
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/richard-parry-the-bonnot-gang-the-story-of-the-french-illegalists
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-the-anarchist-tension
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-errico-malatesta-and-revolutionary-violence
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-from-riot-to-insurrection-analysis-for-an-anarchist-perspective-against-post
Although I do drop some insurrectionary texts above, here’s for more developed readings.
- https://illwilleditions.noblogs.org/files/2019/03/Insurrectional-Anarchism-a-reader-IWE-READ.pdf (particularly Sasha K. and the Red Sunshine Gang and as always Bonanno)
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aragorn-nihilism-anarchy-and-the-21st-century
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/baedan-baedan
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/serafinski-blessed-is-the-flame
I may change this list as time goes.