Anarchism: A Beginner's Guide

By Ruth Kinna

What do anarchists stand for? In this clear and penetrating study, Ruth Kinna goes directly to the heart of this controversial ideology, explaining the influences that have shaped anarchism and the different tactics and strategies that have been used by anarchists throughout history to achieve their ends. Kinna covers themes both historical and acutely contemporary, including: Could anarchy ever really be a viable alternative to the state? Can anarchist ideals ever be consistent with the justification of violence? How has anarchism influenced the anti-globalization movement? Ruth Kinna is Lecturer in Politics at Loughborough University, UK.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Release date: Dec 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781780741277

Ruth Kinna

Ruth Kinna works at Loughborough University in the UK. She is the author of Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition (2016) and writes on historical and contemporary anarchist politics. She is editor of the peer-review journal Anarchist Studies.

Reviews for Anarchism

[andrewblackman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

How to summarise a book which is itself a summary of a vast body of thought? Probably it's not possible, but here goes. The book spends a lot of time on what anarchism is not. This is understandable since it has been so frequently labeled by its enemies and misunderstood by the general public. So anarchy is not disorder, chaos, lack of government. It is instead lack of hierarchy. It is organising, but by voluntary participation rather than violence and fear. This is of course difficult to do, especially because we have become so used to the state and dependent on it for support and protection, so getting rid of it is hard even to imagine. But anarchism entails an utter rejection of the state, defined as the entity holding a monopoly on violence in a particular territory. Government would instead be based on grassroots organisations, local decision-making, with power dispersed as widely as possible instead of being concentrated among just a few people at the top.The book categorises the various types of anarchists: anarcho-syndicalists, anarcha-feminists, primitivists, eco-anarchists, etc. Also lots on the various proposed forms of organisation, most of which involve some version of local communities making decisions but also linked together in a federated structure to allow coordination across wider areas.The final section is on strategies for transforming society, from protest, strikes and gradualism through to assassinations and guerilla warfare. This section was more depressing, since it was more a catalogue of failed tactics than anything else. Overall I got a great taste of anarchism, its ideas and main thinkers, and most of all there were very detailed sources - I now have a long, long anarchist wishlist, along with a ton of websites to visit.

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The title should be: Beginner's guide to the history of anarchism. An important distinction I think. I wanted to learn something about anarchism but I learned more from reading wikipedia for 10 minutes. I assume this was some student's end term paper. The sudden and jarring insert in the middle discussing some obscure film was just bizarre and it's the only thing that kept me scratching my head.