Great Anarchists

Great Anarchists by Ruth Kinna and Clifford Harper started life as a pamphlet series. We’ve collected all ten essays and illustrations together to make this beautiful book.

“These short introductions delve into the anarchist canon to recover some of the distinctive ideas that historical anarchists advanced to address problems relevant to their circumstances. Although these contexts were special, many of the issues the anarchists wrestled with still plague our lives. Anarchists developed a body of writing about power, domination, injustice and exploitation, education, prisons and a lot more besides. Honing in on different facets of the anarchist canon is not just an interesting archaeological exercise. The persistence, development and adaptation of anarchist traditions depends on our surveying the historical landscape of ideas and drawing on the resources it contains. The theoretical toolbox that this small assortment of anarchists helped to construct is there to use, amend and adapt.”

About the Authors

Ruth Kinna
is a professor of Political Theory at Loughborough University, working in the Department of Politics, History and International Relations where she specialises in political philosophy. Since 2007 she has been the editor of the journal Anarchist Studies. Her most recent book is The Government of No-one (Pelican).

Clifford Harper
is a worker, illustrator, and militant anarchist. He has worked for many radical and alternative publications, the international anarchist movement and almost all of the UK national newspapers.

Accolades

“This fine collection brings to us great figures from the past
whose thoughts and actions speak eloquently to the problems
we face today.”

– Noam Chomsky
(Emeritus professor of linguistics at MIT)

“An incredibly beautiful book which offers lucid and insightful
introductions to a carefully curated selection of some of the
‘big names’ of anarchism. Through the format of illustrated
personal profiles it offers an incredibly accessible primer to
some key ideas and debates.”

– Rhiannon Firth
(Senior Research Officer in the department of Sociology at the
University of Essex. Author of Utopian politics: Citizenship
and Practice – Routledge, 2012).