….failed as usual to keep up with our social media postings! But we did publish a whole load of books, including these goodies:
Anarchy in Greece, Resistance Reports from 2018 & Beyond. This one is a full size A5 Book of 260 pages and a benefit project to boot! £8 ISBN 978-1-914567-81-0 Anarchy in Greece is a compilation of resistance reports on the ground from 2018 onward, providing rare English-language insights into the country’s anarchist movement and the conditions of Greek society around it. This book is a benefit for prisoner support work in Greece.
Ten Questions on Anarchism by Guillaume Davranche a translation of a French introduction to anarchism with 136 pages, it’s a pocketbook for just £3, ISBN 978-1-914567-90-2 Where Does Anarchism Come From? What is the Economic Project of Anarchism? What Kind of Democratic Project? What Position Regarding Ecology? What Feminist Approach? What About Internationalism? What Stance Towards Religion? What Strategy for Action? What Kind of Organisation? What Intervention in Past Revolutions? Who Are the Key Historical Figures?
Try Anarchism for Life by Cindy Milstein is a gorgeous 160pages of text and art in pocketbook form for £3 ISBN 978-1-914567-86-5
Our first pocket size version of a Cindy Milstein’s book! “Try Anarchism for Life revolves around a thought experiment: What are some of the many beautiful dimensions of anarchism? In reply, it blends gorgeous circle A drawings by twenty-six artists with Milstein’s words, forming picture-prose that are at once inviting and playful, poignant and dreamy. The pieces encourage us to notice and expand on liberatory practices, especially in a time when so much feels impossible. In depicting how anarchism gifts us lives worth living, this book warms ailing hearts and offers tender succor.”
Against Cultured Meat by Richard Giles and Nathan Poirier. 44 pages, A6 pocketbook, £2, ISBN 978-1-914567-85-8 “A pocket book analysis of lab grown meat from radical vegan perspectives. As anarchists and vegans, we are against cultured meat—meat that is made from animal cells “without” killing an animal. This pocketbook contains critical reviews of three books on cultured meat that expose weaknesses, flaws, and naivety in arguments of those promoting this technology. While this form of meat might sound ideal, looking deeper reveals that it is a technofix largely funded by millionaires and billionaires, supported by (some) governments, and highly privatized. Cultured meat ends up being a thoroughly capitalist and anti-vegan venture where a small sect of society will gain some notoriety and wealth. Ultimately, cultured meat is always an anthropocentric enterprise that violates the rights and well-being of animals, preventing their liberation.” A6, 44 pages £2
Punk Anarchy in Action, Edited by Jim Donaghey, Will Boisseau & Caroline Kaltefleiter it’s a beast of a full size book at 508 pages, £11 ISBN 978-1-914567-84-1 Over 500 pages of academic analysis of anarchist punx in action! Just what you need to keep a heavy door open. The third in our series of analysing the part punk has played in anarchist activity, scenes and lives around the world. “Punk Anarchy in Action! provides activist and scholarly accounts of how anarchism and punk overlap in practice. From various corners of Europe, Southeast Asia and the Americas, this collection of chapters tackles theres including: anti-fascism; violence; religion and anti-religion; Total Liberation and intersectionality; squatting; queer feminism; veganism and animal liberation; and ageing in radical scenes. Things are rarely straightforward in everyday lived experience, even less so in diverse punk countercultures informed by non-doctrinaire anarchist philosophies. These thoughtful and critical analyses draw from first-hand experience to explore the complex issues that arise when we encounter PUNK ANARCHY IN ACTION!”
Contributions to The Revolutionary Struggle, Intended To Be Discussed, Corrected, And Principally, Put Into Practice Without Delay by R.Vaneigem. 156 pages, A6 pocketbook, £3 ISBN 978-1-914567-87-2 A situationist revolutionary classic made affordable and fits in your pocketable too! This edition has a wonderful cover photo too courtesy of comrade Edith.
Challenging Ideas on Human-Nonhuman Relations by Benedcit Quetzal. An A6 pocketbook of 48 Pages with the ISBN 978-1-914567-88-9 for just £1.50! Fifteen years since its first Active print run as a riso-graphed A5 pamphlet, Active Distribution are bringing Benedict Quetzal’s essay Challenging Ideas On Human-Nonhuman Relations back into circulation. The essay is an urgent demand for the moral consideration of other animals based on their ability to suffer.
Murray Bookchin and the Allure of Primitivism by Brian Morris. A6 pocketbook, 68 pages, £2
ISBN 978-1-914567-82-7 Primitivists often romanticise hunter-gatherer societies as living in a paradise created by the wholesale rejection of civilisation — agriculture, technology, language, art and, atits most extreme, even conceptual thought itself. Through Murray Bookchin’s lens, Brian Morris exposes this appeal as ill-informed anthropological fantasy, offering no practical alternative to the devastating human and ecological impact of global capitalism and authoritarian power structures. Bookchin, Morris argues, charted a middle path whilst recognising the lessons we can learn from the egalitarianism of many tribal societies. Rather than retreating to an imagine stone age Eden, he embraced humanity’s paradox—our instinctual connection to nature alongside our need for social and cultural bonds—and advocated building a decentralised, ecological socialism for the benefit of all.
The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy by the Situationist International, an A6 pocketbook of just 20 pages for £1, ISBN 978-1-914567-89-6 The classic S.I. text in a new pocketbook form. for only a quid!!! In August 1965, when Watts erupted in flames, the Situationist International saw something beyond a race riot. They saw the spectacle-commodity system devouring itself. For five days, residents looted and burned not from mindless rage but as an instinctive rejection of consumer capitalism’s empty promises of fulfilment always dangling just out of reach. The Situationists celebrated this uprising against commodity fetishism. What made Watts revolutionary wasn’t just revolt against racism but its exposure of the alienation poisoning all modern industrial society. A system promising abundance and gratification while maintaining rigid hierarchies, leaving everyone enslaved to the commodity spectacle.
Jewish Anarchist Voices, 3 Accounts by Anonymous, An A6 pocketbook of 72 pages £2.50, ISBN 978-1-914567-91-9 A zine we’ve tuned into a pocketbook in which we offer three texts by an Anonymous contributor from 2019, an Anonymous contributor from 2024, and a classic piece from 1983 by Fredy Perlman. The three articles are all written by Anarchists of Jewish heritage. On the Inherent Anti-Semitism of Zionism & the Recuperation of Jewish Struggle by the West. A personal rejection of Zionism and a critique of the recuperation of anti-Semitism by the western world’s right. Heritage & Discontent, How a legacy of Jewish struggle helped inspire a broader commitment to resisting the logic of authoritarianism today. Anti-Semitism & the Beirut Pogrom by Fredy Perlman, A classic piece by the late Fredy Perlman, as relevant as ever today.
On the George Floyd Uprising of 2020, Accounts & Accomplices by Anonymous. Another A6 pocketbook but this one has 88 pages and the ISBN 978-1-914567-83-4 and costs £2.50 A compilation of writing regarding the insurrection against white supremacy in the USA in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. This is a re-print of a brochure made by Integrity Editions In 2022. In 2022 American police murdered approximately 1,176 people. In 025, American police killed approximately 1,278 people.
The State or Revolution by Iain Mckay. A6 pocketbook , 184 pages , 6e (yeah its a European one! ISBN: 978-3-911720-10-6 A pocketbook expose of Leninist/commie bullshit by Mr Mckay. This is a co-publication with Rupture Press. What happened during the Russian revolution and why do some call it a coup d’état? This book offers the important and often forgotten answers. Complementing his Anarchism, Marxism and the Commune, Iain Mckay sets the record straight concerning the events, politicking and deception that turned the Russian revolution into the “red terror.”
The following titles are at the printers and will be available from all good alternative outlets in August.
Basic Kropotkin by Brian Morris a 40 page, A6 pocketbook (ISBN 978-1-914567-93-3) for £1.50!First published as an Anarchist Federation pamphlet, this is Brian Morris’s compact guide to Peter Kropotkin’s anarchist thought. One of the nineteenth century’s most serious scientific and political minds. Morris works through the key pillars of Kropotkin’s vision: his conviction that cooperation, not competition, is the true engine of social life; hi rejection of capitalism and the states and his case for a communism built from below through free agreement. Above all, he shows that Kropotkin’s anarchism was an affirmative philosophy- not merely a politics of refusal, but a coherent vision of human society without coercion. Authoritative and timely, Basic Kropotkin includes a foreword by Ruth Kinna -professor of political theory and author of The Government of No One, the acclaimed popular history of anarchism who places these ideas in sharp contemporary context.
What I believe. Emma Goldman a 16 page A6 pocketbook – ISBN 978-1-914567-92-6 – for just a quid!
Written in 1906 for the New York World, this essay is Emma Goldman in her own voice not the caricature conjured by a hostile press, but the thinker herself, setting out with clarity and conviction exactly what she stands for. Goldman takes on each pillar of her ANARCHIST PHILOSOPHY n turn. The coercion she sees built into property and the state; the moral bankruptcy of militarism; the case for free speech as an absolute; and her RADICAL RETHINKING of marriage, religion, and political violence. Above all, she makes the argument that anarchism is a philosophy of peace not the bomb throwing nihilism of popular myth, but a vision of human beings freed from oppressive institutions and capable of genuine solidarity.
The Radical Art of Walter Crane a new 56page addition to our poster book, A6 pocketbook series! – ISBN 978-1-914567-94-0 – £3.
Co-published with The Radical Poster Collective. Walter Crane was one of the best known and most prolific illustrators of his time. He played a major part in the hugely influential Arts and Craft Movement towards the end of the 19th Century. Along the way, he created an unrivalled catalogue of radical art – cartoons, newspaper front covers, pamphlets, logos, membership cards and tickets. You will still see Walter Crane’s drawings reproduced, 130 years after they were created. This short book includes a tiny fraction of his artistic output, hand picked by members of the Radical Poster Collective
Every Flag is Black in a Fire by Crimethinc a 36 page A6 pocketbook for just two quid, ISBN 978-1-914567-98-8 Authors and artists from across a century and a half explore the meaning of the black flag, the anarchist standard of rebellion and negation. Featuring Louise Michel, the Haymarket Martyrs, Sergei Eisenstein, André Breton, Jean Genet, Léo Ferré, and more.
Proudhon Harbinger of Anarchism by Iain McKay another in our series of Mckay’s historical contributions. A6 pocketbook, £2.50, 88 pages, ISBN 978-1-911788-15-7 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first person to proclaim themselves as an anarchist. Laying the foundations for revolutionary anarchism, he influenced Bakunin and Kropotkin along with workers across the globe. Yet American academic J. Salwyn Schapiro accused him of fascism. Here Schapiro’s many distortions and inventions are refuted, showing that Proudhon – for all his flaws – was a harbinger of anarchism.
Anarchy in the USA, The International Working People’s Association by Iain Mckay. Iain takes a look over the pond and tempted us to do a punky cover but we managed to resist! An A6 pocketbook with 172 pages for a mere £3, ISBN 978-1-914567-95-7
The judicial murder of the Haymarket martyrs inspired Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Voltairine de Cleyre to become anarchists. The martyrs were members of the International Working People’s Association, the first American anarchist federation. Find out what it stood for and its relevance today with this discussion and contextualising of its theory and practice as well as articles from its English-language paper, The Alarm.
Organisation Community Continuity by Peter Gelderloos a 116 page A6 pocketbook with the ISBN number of 9781914567964 for just £2.50!!
False modesty has prevented us from seeing how effective we’ve been, ego has prevented us from seeing how systematically we fumble revolutionary situations. It’s time to get real!
For an Antiauthoritarian Inequality by Peter Gelderloos another pocketbook from Peter G, with 54 pages this one is only £2! ISBN 978-1-914567-97-1 For an Antiauthoritarian Inequality: An anarchic response to power dynamics. Equality is a lie, a persistent holdover from liberalism. This text explores how equality misses out on the real jewel–difference–and makes it harder for us to embrace an ecosystemic worldview based on complementarity and solidarity rather than an authoritarian, homogeneous unity.
The Romanian Anarchists by Hristu Parai-Pană an A6 pocketbook with 100 pages dedicated to revealing the right wing misery in Romania and all for £2, ISBN 978-1-911788-16-4 Who are the Romanian anarchists? The stories of these past and present individuals from this Eastern European country have long been known only to a small number of people. This new booklet brings to a wider audience 150 years of anti-authoritarian history and tradition that have been either forgotten or rewritten by socialist and capitalist regimes.
¡Todos y todas, manos a la obra! Activismo climático: el camino a seguir by Jan Goodey
(All Hands on Deck in Spanish) an A6 pocketbook with 60 pagses for 3e, ISBN 978-1-914567-99-5 Los actuales gobiernos capitalistas profanan nuestras tierras y océanos salvajes, nuestras ecologías animales y humanas, llevándonos a un mundo gobernado por la inteligencia artificial y la tecnocracia, un mundo construido sobre acero, vidrio y una existencia virtual y monitoreada, que no merece llamarse existencia. Es hora de que todas aquellas personas que aprecian la liberad, el mutualismo y la naturaleza salvaje se unan para alejarnos del desastre y conducirnos hacia un futuro mejor — para todos y todas.
Spectacular Times Booklets and Boxset
For many years various anarchist publishers in the UK have talked about reprinting the classic Spectacular Times pocket book series. Discussions about how to package them, and how to edit them were had and yet it never happened, till now! Active and Agit Press a have finally come up with the goods. All original 14 booklets are reprinted as they were (except for colour covers) and a new booklet The Story of Spectacular Times, Paradise Lost has been produced. They will all be available as individual booklets and also as a box set, in a full colour card open box.
Spectacular Times 01: Images A6 pocketbook £1.25 ISBN 978-1-911788-00-3
Spectacular Times 02: Everyday Life A6 pocketbook £1.25 ISBN 978-1-911788-01-0
Spectacular Times 03: The Media A6 pocketbook £1.25 ISBN 978-1-911788-02-7
Spectacular Times 04: Fin De Spectacle A6 pocketbook £1.50 ISBN 978-1-911788-03-4
Spectacular Times 05: Into the Endgame A6 pocketbook £1.50 ISBN 978-1-911788-04-1
Spectacular Times 06: Food A6 pocketbook £1.50 ISBN 978-1-911788-05-8
Spectacular Times 07: Women and the Spectacle A6 pocketbook £1.25 iSBN 978-1-911788-06-5
Spectacular Times 08-09: Skeleton Keys A6 pocketbook £1.75 ISBN 978-1-911788-07-2
Spectacular Times 10: Animals A6 pocketbook 1.75 ISBN 978-1-911788-08-9
Spectacular Times 11: More of the Shame A6 pocketbook £1.50 iSBN 978-1-911788-09-6
Spectacular Times 12: The Bad Days Will End A6 pocketbook £1.50 ISBN 978-1-911788-10-2
Spectacular Times 13: Cities of Illusion A6 pocketbook £1.75 ISBN 978-1-911788-11-9
Spectacular Times 14: Bigger Cages and Longer Chains A6 pocketbook £2.25 ISBN 978-1-911788-12-6
Paradise now! The story of Spectacular Times. A6 pocketbook £2.25 ISBN 978-1-911788-13-3 ISBN 978-1-911788-14-0
Spectacular Times Box Set All 15 pocket books in a printed box, £21 ISBN 978-1-911788-14-0