This will be a short blog on my A Libertarian Reader collection. A few people have indicated that they are looking forward to this appearing so they may be wondering what has befallen it. Suffice to say, there has been a few unexpected delays. Here I will indicate where it is in terms of expected publication dates and the changes which have been made to it. I should also note that work on my edition of Kropotkin’s Words of a Rebel has also recommenced so I am working on the Introduction – which means some of what I wanted to do (like write up a few talks) will be delayed.

Since my last update, some things have changed. It will now be published by Active Distribution over four volumes rather than the originally planned two (which is double the initial idea!) by PM Press. Due to various factors, including production price, these will all be printed at the same time. As volumes 3 and 4 (covering 1937 to 1976 and 1977 to 2016, respectively) are nowhere near complete, this means that publication will be delayed until next year – the coronavirus is not helping as it is limiting access to certain technologies I do not have at home.

I know that this project has spiralled somewhat but we are talking about a movement – libertarian socialism – which has an impressive and inspiring literature. It is difficult to limit it down when you have people like Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, Louise Michel and a host of others well-known or not. I hope that I have included a wide range of texts which cover critiques, means, struggles and visions of the future free society. Yes, there may be some repetition in terms of ideas expressed but every text brings something unique – even if only bringing a lesser known comrade back into the light from being buried by history. The project has reaffirmed the positivity and constructiveness of the libertarian ideal – and what a travesty it is that the propertarian-right have attempted to appropriate it for their boss-worship and defences of property-based hierarchies.

I have made a few slight changes to what is now volumes 1 and 2, covering 1857 to 1896 and 1897 to 1936 respectively. The new contents for these two volumes are now as follows:

A Libertarian Reader: Volume 1 – Fighting for Freedom, 1857 to 1896

Libertarian: Its Origins, Use and (attempted) Arrogation

On the Male and Female Human-Being – Letter to P.J. Proudhon – Joseph Déjacque
Exchange – Joseph Déjacque
The Federative Principle and the need to reconstitute the party of the revolution – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Anarchy – César de Paepe
Communism and Property – André Léo
Report of the Brussels section – International Workers’ Association
Resolution on Collective Ownership – International Workers’ Association
Resolution on War – International Workers’ Association
Woman and Morals: Freedom or Monarchy – André Léo
The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future – César De Paepe
Organisation and General Strike – Michael Bakunin
Programme – L’Alliance internationale de la démocratie socialiste
Policy of the International – Michael Bakunin
Resolution and Discussion on Resistance Societies – International Workers’ Association
The Presidency of Mutual Assistance Societies – Eugène Varlin
Manifesto – Parisian Sections of the International Workers’ Association
Workers Societies – Eugène Varlin
Letter to Albert Richard – Michael Bakunin
To the worker of the countryside – André Léo
Appeal to the Citizenesses of Paris – A Group of Citizenesses
Declaration to the French People – Commune de Paris
The Programme of the Commune – André Léo
Federalism – James Guillaume
Revolution without Woman – André Léo
The Internationale – Eugène Pottier
Protest of the Alliance – Michael Bakunin
Circular to all the Federations of the International Workers’ Association – Fédération jurassienne
Statement before the Military Tribunal – Louise Michel
Manifesto – Federación Regional Española de la A.I.T.
Resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress – International Workers’ Association
Work and Wealth – Joshua King Ingalls
Anarchy and Communism – Carlo Cafiero
Political Rights – Peter Kropotkin
Karl Marx as Friend and Foe – Benjamin Tucker
Defence Statement – Louise Michel
Manifesto – International Working People’s Association
A Factory as it Might Be – William Morris
Socialism: What It Is – Benjamin R. Tucker
The International – Albert Parsons
Haymarket Speech – August Spies
Parsons’ Plea for Anarchy – Albert Parson
Freedom – Charlotte Wilson
I am an anarchist – Lucy Parsons
Lucy E. Parsons on Anarchy – Lucy E. Parsons
Socialist Letters – Ernest Lesigne
Work and Organisation – Francesco Saverio Merlino
Why are we Anarchists? – Élisée Reclus
Anarchistic Socialism – Victor Yarros
Anarchy versus Social Democracy – John Turner
The Slavery of Our Times – Leo Tolstoy
Why I am a Communist – John Most
Sex Slavery – Voltairine de Cleyre
The Soul of Man under Socialism – Oscar Wilde
Mutualism – Dyer D. Lum
The Effects of Persecution – Peter Kropotkin
Why I am an Anarchist – Louise Michel
Appeal of 1st May 1896 – Fédération des Bourses du travail de France et des colonies
The Forthcoming Congress – F. Domela Nieuwenhuis
Social Democracy in Germany – Gustav Landauer
Let Us Be Just: Open Letter to Liebknecht – Warlaam Tcherkesoff
Anarchy Defended by Anarchists – John Most and Emma Goldman
Anarchism and Violence – Louisa Sarah Bevington

Biographical Sketches

A Libertarian Reader: Volume 2 – Fighting for Freedom, 1897 to 1936

Organisation – Errico Malatesta
Sabotage – Émile Pouget
Freedom through Education: The Libertarian School – E. Reclus, L. Michel, P. Kropotkin, L. Tolstoy and others
Libertarian or Anarchist? – Henry Glasse
November Eleventh – Voltairine de Cleyre
Toward Anarchy – Errico Malatesta
Speeches at the I.W.W.’s founding Convention – Lucy E. Parsons
Direct Action and the General Strike in Russia – Peter Kropotkin
The Charter of Amiens – Confédération générale du travail
Stirner: The Ego and His Own – Max Baginski
Anarchists and Unions – Peter Kropotkin
Resolutions – International Anarchist Congress
Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World – Industrial Workers of the World
A New Declaration of Independence – Emma Goldman
Working-Class Socialism – E. J. B. Allen
Cranky Notions – Joseph A. Labadie
Tom Mann Quits Politics – Tom Mann
Anarchy and the Labour War – George Barrett
Manifesto of 23 September 1911 – Partido Liberal Mexicano
Mary Wollstonecraft, Her Tragic Life and Her Passionate Struggle for Freedom – Emma Goldman
The Commune is Risen – Voltairine de Cleyre
Syndicalism at Work – Tom Mann
There is Power in a Union – Joe Hill
Syndicalism and the State – Tom Mann
Without Bosses – Ricardo Flores Magón
Solidarity Forever – Ralph Chaplin
International Anarchist Manifesto on the War – A. Berkman, E. Goldman, E. Malatesta, F. Domela Nieuwenhuis and others
Come, Workers, Let Us Take Counsel Together – Alexander Berkman
Towards Industrial Freedom – Edward Carpenter
Self-Government in Industry – George Douglas Howard Cole
The Deadly Parallel – Industrial Workers of the World
Editorial [on the Bolsheviks and the Constituent Assembly] – Golos Truda
Justice for the Negro – Industrial Workers of the World
Guild Socialism Restated – George Douglas Howard Cole
To All Peasants and Workers of the Ukraine – The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine (Makhnovists)
An Anarchist Programme – Unione Anarchica Italiana
A letter from Kropotkin – Peter Kropotkin
Report from Moscow – Otto Rühle
Revolution and Dictatorship: On one anarchist who has forgotten his principles – Luigi Fabbri
Forces of Revolution – Sébastian Faure
The Goals for Which We Fight – Kronstadt Izvestia
Class Struggle or Class Hatred? – Errico Malatesta
Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism – International Workers’ Association
What is behind the label? A plea for clearness – Sylvia Pankhurst
Reflections on the General Strike – Emma Goldman
The True Nature of the State – Rudolf Rocker
The Struggle Against the State – Nestor Makhno
Letter – Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism – Alexander Berkman
Is the Anarchist Ideal Achievable? – Sébastien Faure
Statement of Principles – Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias
Nationalism and Culture – Rudolf Rocker
My Social Credo – G.P. Maximoff
There is no Communism in Russia – Emma Goldman
For an Anarchist Policy in the Trade Unions – Sam Dolgoff
Colonies – a Short Cut to Freedom? – Sidney Solomon
A Warning Voice – National Committee, Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederal Concept of Libertarian Communism – Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Working Class in Struggle – J. Ribeyron
From the collective contract to worker control – N. Faucier
Interview with the Toronto Star – Buenaventura Durruti
The Party and the Working Class – Anton Pannekoek
The State and Classes – Camillo Berneri
Solidarity – Emma Goldman

Biographical Sketches

Volumes 3 and 4

The list of potential texts for volume 3 is already lengthy and will need to be pruned down – although there are authors and organisations (like the Mujeres Libres) which I would like to include. The 1960s, obviously, was a high point in libertarian activism and thought but the whole post-war period has many interesting anarchist and libertarian socialist works. Likewise, the 1940s saw the British anarchist movement flourish and we have the likes of Marie-Louise Berneri writing very good pieces (it is a crying shame that a collection of her articles has never been produced – beyond Neither East nor West [1952] which is very specific in its material and does not do justice to the breadth and depth of her writing). Then we have the likes of Daniel Guérin, Maurice Brinton, Cornelius Castoriadis, and the Situationists.

Volume 4 needs the most work in terms of identifying texts and will contain an yet-unwritten Afterword discussing libertarian schools of thought and basic libertarian ideas on direct action, self-management, etc. This should include the likes of Colin Ward, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

As well as articles by libertarians I will also include articles by libertarians on others libertarians in order to get around copyright concerns – there are some people whose works are not in the public domain and those who control the copyright may object (assuming I can track them down). So, for example, I am thinking of including an article on Bertrand Russell from Anarchy (London) and Nicolas Walter on George Orwell (who I would say straggles the line between libertarian and democratic socialism).

I will note that breaking the books into four 40 year blocks (from two 80 year ones) seems to have worked well. While there is some overlap in terms of authors, it does seem to naturally group together. When it was two books, the first volume ended on the high of the Spanish Revolution of 1936 but the four volumes bring at appropriate texts, I think.

Suffice to say, I will be working on collecting and selecting texts for volumes 3 and 4 in the coming months with the aim of getting it to the publishers in the first quarter of 2021. If you have any recommendations for these two volumes, do let me know.

I end by providing a short article by Henry Glasse from Freedom in 1899 on the growing use of “libertarian” within the English-language movement from volume 2 of A Libertarian Reader. I first came across this when I was going through the archives finding texts for Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology and found it of interest. While writing the biographical sketches for that volume, I soon discovered that very little is known about Glasse – in spite him being a well-known activist and writer who translated Kropotkin. It was not even clear when he was born and which year he died.

Originally, I was planning to ask here if anyone had any information about him, such as when he was born or died, but I emailed a couple of anarchist mailing lists and comrades were very helpful. I have managed to create this:

Glasse, Henry (1847-1925) was an Indian born British anarchist connected with the London Freedom group who immigrated to South Africa in the 1880s where he remained, except for a short period around the time of the Boer War, until his death. As well as contributing to Freedom and translating some of Kropotkin’s writings into English, he wrote for the South African left-wing press (including the Cape Socialist, Voice of Labour and the weekly syndicalist International) and distributed Freedom Press publications. Unlike many in the South African labour and socialist movements, he advocated a multi-racial syndicalism: “For a white worker in this South Africa to pretend he can successfully fight his battle independent of the coloured wage slaves – the vast majority – is, to my mind, simply idiocy” (Voice of Labour, 26 January 1912). For more details, see Lucien van der Walt’s “Bakunin’s Heirs in South Africa: race, class and revolutionary Syndicalism from the IWW to the International Socialist League,” Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (May, 2004).

I would like to thank Mairtin O’Cathain for tracking down the year Glasse died and Lucien van der Walt for his useful suggestions.

So I went from having very little information about him to having a fitting biographical sketch. How did people do research without the internet? Rhetorical question – I’m old enough to know!

Until I blog again, be seeing you…

Libertarian or Anarchist?

Henry Glasse

Freedom, January 1899

This short article by leading English anarchist Henry Glasse indicates the growth in use of the term “libertarian” as a synonym for anarchist in the English-language movement. In addition, it shows the reasoning behind the embrace of the term by many anarchists.

The term “Libertarian” in place of “Anarchist” seems to be used with increasing frequency. The newer term pleases me better because, while it emphatically denotes our cardinal principle, it admits of no misconstruction nor misunderstanding. We who have long fought under the device of “Anarchy” have naturally acquired a regard for the name and frankly accepted it with whatever stigma might attach thereto, still we must admit that the very word in itself is liable to be taken, quite honestly, in a wrong sense, while our many dishonest opponents take care to recognise no other. Anarchy is most frequently taken to mean disorder, confusion, chaos – quite the contrary of that true harmony which we affirm to spring from Freedom alone.

In face of the reaction which has now set in and which daily pretends to improve the world by the imposition of new restrictions upon every branch of the activity of the human will, and upon every tendency of the human mind to transcend the limits of the commonplace and respectable, we alone among all parties remain unaltered in our devotion to Freedom, and oppose to all laws and regulations our one demand – Liberty for each and for all ; Liberty unbounded.

And this is not because we believe that each man possessed of freedom will necessarily do what we conceive to be right; on the contrary, it is because we admit human imperfection that we refuse to acquiesce in subjection to a government either representing a minority intent on maintaining its privileges, or swayed by a majority imbued with prejudice and bent on crushing the individual will into submission to its own mediocrity.

Our motto: “An-Archy – No Government,” is synonymous with Libertarianism [The article has “Libertism,” an obvious typographical error] but I think the latter name is more expressive and better calculated to win the sympathies of those whose generous instincts we seek to enlist for our Cause and whose noble but wandering, aspirations we seek to direct to the true path – Freedom.