Anarchist Studies

Editorial

Ruth Kinna

A recent post on the anarchist academics list asked users to suggest five books that every anarchist 'should read'. Respondents could include fiction and non-fiction. The request, one of the first respondents noted, promised not just an exchange of ideas about what might be regarded as 'key' or 'good' in an 'anarchist canon', but a more profound interaction about reading. This implied a degree of trust (that choices won't be ridiculed) - and above all confidence - that choices accurately capture deeply-held beliefs or self-understandings (and/or that the reasons for inclusion will be clear). At first, not many users replied. Earlier suggestions to set up a virtual book club have been met by a similar lack of public response. Is the problem indecision or lack of trust and confidence? How many users, I wonder, can name their top five without hesitation? I suspect more than are prepared to say. Even if the choices are changed as soon as they're listed, it's not difficult to draw up a mental list of fiv books. It's much more troubling telling others what your choices are: Is volume 5 of Reclus's Universal Geography too nerdy? Might Infantile Leftism be confusing?

At the risk of work avoidance, I suspended my own doubts about to cheap TV ranking programmes and thought for a bit about what I'd choose. I soon found that I couldn't stop myself from looking along at the bookshelves behind me. The desire to check the mental list against the wider possible selection was an error because it injected a fatal moment of doubt: spontaneity gave way to a concern with justification, what was appropriate and, finally, to a worry about what might be read into any selection I might make. I checked the email again: no one else had written in. Clearly, I wasn't alone. And if the slow but steady flood of top-fives suggested that the problem was just mine, the extended debate about some inclusions bolstered my initial suspicions, though I greatly enjoyed looking at what others were willing to share.

To business: this issue has no particular theme, and the essays are as rich in their diversity as they are in their analyses. Guido Preparata's essay, which examines the thought of Silvio Gesell and Rudolf Steiner, is a companion piece to his article 'Of money, heresy, and surrender: The ways of our system - an outline, from Bretton Woods to the financial slump of 2008' which appeared in issue 17.1. Francis Dupuis-Déri examines affinity groups and shows how and why they are suited to anarchist actions. Laurence Davis considers the dichotomy of lifestyle and social anarchism in a critical review of Bookchin's work. Last, not least, Roger Farr discusses the anarchism of the Dada poet, Hugo Ball.

Looking forward, in the next issue of Anarchist Studies we will mark the centenary of Tolstoy's death with an editorial by Alex Christoyannopoulos and Terry Hopton and a short reflection on What is Art? by Allan Antliff.

To return to my list, I confess that Tolstoy did not appear in my first cut. There instead was: Kropotkin, Appeal to the Young, Isabel Meredith, A Girl Among the Anarchists, Gustav Landauer, For Socialism, Goodman and Goodman, Communitas … and then I was stuck: The Alexander Berkman Reader: Life of an Anarchist (ed. Fellner) or Paul Auster Leviathan?