Anarchy in action - Softcover

Ward, Colin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061360317 ISBN 13: 9780061360312

Publisher: Harper & Row, 1973

Synopsis

With chapters on the family, topless federations, schools, housing, crime, employment, welfare, deviancy, planning, and more, this is probably the best practical example of anarchist ideas in action. As he writes in his introduction "This book is not intended for people who had spent a lifetime pondering the problems of anarchism, but for those who either had no idea of what the word implied or knew exactly what it implied and rejected it, considering that it had no relevance for the modern world. My original preference as a title was the more cumbersome but more accurate 'Anarchism As A Theory Of Organization' because, as I urge in my preface, that is what the book is about. It is not about strategies for revolution and it is not involved in speculation on the way an anarchist society would function. It is about the ways in which people organize themselves in any kind of human society, whether we care to categorize those societies as primitive, traditional, capitalist or communist...

About this title

About the Author:

Colin Ward (1924–2010) was Britain's foremost anarchist writer. Editor of Freedom newspaper and then Anarchy magazine from 1947 to 1970, he is the author or coauthor of over thirty books, including Anarchy in Action, Talking Anarchy, Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction, Cotters and Squatters, The Allotment, and Arcadia for All.

Review:

"It is difficult to match the empirical strength, the lucidity of prose, and the integration of theory and practical insight in the magnificent body of work produced by the veteran anarchist Colin Ward." —Prospect

"Colin Ward has never written a highly paid column for a national newspaper or been on the bestseller lists, but his fan club is distinguished, and his influence wider than he himself may know." —Times Literary Supplement

"In Anarchy in Action, Colin Ward set out his belief that an anarchist society was not an end goal . . . . Ward saw all distant goals as a form of tyranny and believed that anarchist principles could be discerned in everyday human relations and impulses. Within this perspective, politics was about strengthening co-operative relations and supporting human ingenuity in its myriad vernacular and everyday forms." —Guardian

"Anarchy, for Ward, was a system in which mutuality predominates; and in a series of books he explored ‘anarchist applications,’ championing such groups as allotment-holders, prefab dwellers, amateur music-makers, squatters, DIY housebuilders and others who operate in the penumbra of the bureaucratic state." —Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper & Row
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0061360317
• ISBN 13: 9780061360312
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 157