Author: jon active

Ok so I’m slipping a bit with the website updates! So far this year we’ve released 14 new titles, 6 new versions of anarchist classics and reprinted a bunch of our better selling titles. The new titles include; The Romanian Right by Hirtsui Parai-Pana a look at the misery of Romanian politics. This inspired us to doa new version of Fredy Perlman’s The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism for which we came up with a classic looking new cover, featuring some Romanian fascist clerics. Then there is the self explanatory “I’m an Anarchist because I’ve been wronged, and I’ve seen everything else fail” by the sorely missed Benjamin Zephaniah. It’s a snip at a quid and includes 4 short texts which leave one in no doubt about his political leaning. We did a two pocket book version of Kropotkin’s classic Conquest of Bread and kickstarted our new co-publishing venture with Rupture Press by releasing Can Degrowth Struggle by Alexander Dunlap.

We have two update booklets from Rojava the most recent one (pictured above) is an appraisal from the front line of the struggle’s history right up to the PKK ceasefire announcement. We finally got around to doing Roger Yates’s second book, Storming Heaven, a fun fiction from the Paris Commmune through the life of Arhur Rimbaud. New Times is the first ever English translation of a talk by Kropotkin given in Manchester in 1893 and only ever published previously in French. We have Iain Mckay to thank for the translation. There’s a bunch more too!

We have now done the bright thing of publishing two different texts with effectively the same title; Veganarchism! A genius move, I’m sure it won’t cause any confusion when it comes to ordering! The book version has the full title Veganarchism, Making Veganism and Anarchism Dangerous Again. The pocketbook version is called Veganarchism; Against all oppression, everywhere, all the time. As you can guess its a subject close to our hearts! We have also finally gotten around to reprinting Shariah Don’t Like It..? Punk and Religion in Indonesia and The Punk Ananrchisms of Class Was and Crimethinc both now in cute pocketbook formats. Eat Like it Matters has been reprinted after a 3 year hiatus and Warp and Weft is available again too.

We have renewed our collaboration with the venerable Freedom Press and co-published a new version of Physical Resistance: A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism by Dave Hann and updated by Lousie Purbrick. This will be launched by Freedom Press in Feburary, check their website for details.

I’ve been a bit slack with this site of late and also had trouble sorting out ‘back end’ issues with it. But I hope to get back on track soon. There are a load of new books and reprints to tell you about. I have also started a Bluesky page and will open a Telegram channel for Active Distribution Publishing soon.

We teamed up with Crimethinc to release a small collection of works by the Russian anarchist Dmitry Petrov and his biography. Seen and approved by his friends and family we offer this booklet not as a statement of belief in any particular anarchist arguements that surround fighting in inter-state conflicts but because we recognise a comrade, even one we never met, when we see one. Dmitry Petrov: A Life in Combat is a 100 page A6 pocket book with a £2 cover price

A website dedicated to Dmitry is now up and running.

Also just released is the second in our co-publications with Pagini Libere of Romania. This is ‘A Brief History of Anarchism in Romania’ by Vlad Brătuleanu, a new text based on older ones that have not been available before in English.