Historically, anarchist literature has been relegated to small, underfunded publishing houses that simply do not have the resources nor the talent to publish high-quality scholarship in the manner that it deserves. A few scholars of anarchist theory and history - notably Paul Avrich and Paul Goodman - have been able to avoid this pitfall; many of Goodman's later books were published by Random House, while nearly all of Avrich's work has been distributed by one of the country's most respected academic publishers, Princeton University Press. But these are aberrations. Too many important thinkers have had their ideas doomed to obscurity not because of the quality of their writings, but simply because their publishers were unable to achieve adequate circulation for their books. Thankfully, with the recent improvements in desktop publishing, this has begun to change. There are now a few small publishers specializing in anti-authoritarian literature that produce very high-quality work to the benefit of dozens of politically unpopular scholars. Probably the best of these publishing houses is AK Press, located in San Francisco.
A workers co-operative wholly owned by its members, AK Press publishes approximately 15 new titles each year. It also distributes books published by smaller, like-minded presses, including City Lights, Black Rose, Loompanics, Verso, Creation, South End, and Freedom. Two books that AK has recently published itself are The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays by Nester Makhno (114 pages, $9.95) and Reinventing Anarchy, Again edited by Howard J. Ehrlich (387 pages, $19.95).
Born in the Ukraine, Nester Makhno became an anarchist in the first decade of the 1900s. He was imprisoned for his political views, but was released in 1917. Promptly after his liberation, Makhno went back to doing what he had done before: battling the state in all its manifestations. This led him to oppose not only the Bolsheviks, but also the White counter-revolutionaries. Makhno organized a band of fellow anarchists in his native Ukraine and together they actively resisted all attempts to place their homeland under oppressive, centralized rule. Unfortunately they were ultimately unsuccessful and many, including Makhno, were forced into exile; Makhno himself fled to Paris. While there, he contributed to periodicals sympathetic to anarcho-socialist ideas. Perhaps his finest effort during this period was the title essay of the book being reviewed here. Makhno's "The Struggle Against the State," published in October 1926, captures his anti-authoritarian sentiments nicely. He writes:
The fact that the modern state is the organizational form of authority founded upon arbitrariness and violence in the social life of toilers is independent of whether it may be "bourgeois" or "proletarian." It relies upon oppressive centralism, arising out of the direct violence of a minority employed against the majority. In order to enforce and impose the legality of its system, the State resorts to not only the gun and money, but also to potent weapons of psychological pressure. With the aid of such weapons, a tiny group of politicians enforces psychological repression of an entire society, and, in particular, of the toiling masses, conditioning them in such a way as to divert their attention from the slavery instituted by the State.
So much for Marx's desire to create a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Makhno knew that granting any group - including the working class - a monopoly over the use of force is ultimately destructive and must be avoided at all costs. For if it isn't, Makhno argued, only one thing can result: tyranny. In addition to the title essay, the book contains 17 other essays that Makhno wrote while in exile, as well as a useful bibliographical afterword by the book's translator, Alexandre Skirda who, by the way, has also written a biography of Makhno that has been published by AK.
In 1979, Routledge published a volume entitled Reinventing Anarchy that contained 37 recent essays on anarchist thought. The book was quite successful, and along with another compilation of essays published in that same year, Contemporary Anarchism edited by Terry Perlin, it led to a revival of interest in anarchist theory. Believing that it was time for a new collection of essays to be published, Howard J. Ehrlich, one of the editors of Reinventing Anarchy, has recently put together another similar volume entitled Reinventing Anarchy, Again. The book is divided into eight sections and contains 34 articles. If there is one deficiency with the book it is that, like the first volume, it almost completely ignores the recent work of individualist anarchists frequently referred to as anarcho-capitalists. (Indeed, the book contains only one essay by an individualist anarchist, Richard Kostelanetz. And that piece, which deals with the work of composer/playwright/poet John Cage, is only remotely ideological in nature.) But, nevertheless, the book is a useful introduction to the work and ideas of many anarchists working within the libertarian socialist tradition.
Anyone who would like to purchase these books, or others on similar topics, should contact AK about receiving a catalog free of charge. They can be reached at the following address: AK Press, PO Box 40682, San Francisco, CA 94140-0682; or by phone at (415) 923-1429. And for those of you who prefer to correspond by way of e-mail, their address is akpress@org.org.