Anarchism/Anti-State

Attack the System: An Anthology & An Exhaustive Reading List For Mutualist Anarchism

A PDF version of the original edition of the book Attack the System: A New Anarchist Perspective for the 21st Century, now out of print, which includes additional sections and chapters not available in the current edition, is available here: Review Copy – Attack the System

An Anthology of influential articles and essay from Attack the System has been compiled by Eric Noonan is available at the following link: attack the system anthology

A reading list for mutualist anarchism, also compiled by Eric Noonan in 2023, is available below:

Introduction: 0:00 PART I: 11:56 PART II: 16:30 PART III: 17:53 PART IV: 22:36 PART V: 23:00 PART VI (FOR ANCAPS): 25:24 PART VI (FOR ANCOMS): 33:57 An Aside Concerning Tucker and Proudhon: 36:43 PART VII (FOR ANCOMS): 40:11 PART VII (FOR ANCAPS): 41:32 PART VIII: 46:51 PART IX: 49:42 A Quick Aside on Later Carson Books: 50:50 PART X: 53:25 PART XI: 53:55 Further Reading: Blogs, Websites, etc: 1:00:34 Further Reading: Historical Works: 1:04:50 Further Reading: Distributism: 1:06:34 Further Reading: Class Theory: 1:08:40 Further Reading: Leftist Works: 1:11:07 Further Reading: Parecon: 1:15:43 Further Reading: Anarcho-Primitivism: 1:18:09 Further Reading: Liberal Thinkers: 1:24:09 Further Reading: Novels: 1:26:48 Works I Don’t Recommend: 1:27:11

Link to Alliance for the Libertarian Left anthology: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IlEW…

Link to the Attack the System anthology: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q7iu…

Link to Agorist Class Theory by Wally Conger (There are a very wide variety of different versions of this text online. The most complete one I found was on Scribd, I copied it into a Word doc and tried to upload it to the Anarchist Library myself but I couldn’t understand the upload process, so I just decided to upload it to my Drive alongside the ALL and Attack the System anthologies. Naturally I recommend my own version above any others you may find online): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hagt…

Link to Mutual Banking by Gary Elkin (Similar issue, this text wasn’t on the Anarchist Library and the only place I could find it was on one single other similar site, so I figured it would be a good idea to “back it up” to my own Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/103wj…

Some small notes and corrections: I hadn’t read “Debt” by David Graeber before making this video, and so I had a much more inflated, rosy opinion of its content due to how popular it was and because of its author; I insinuate multiple times that the book describes the rise of the state in great detail and advocates for anarcho-communism using historical arguments, when in reality the topics the book covers are significantly more limited to the history of debt, with general arguments against the state and capitalism only really coming into play in the last two chapters and the conclusion, plus the chapter on Mesopotamia. I’m not sure I would even recommend now it as useful for understanding any aspect of anarchism, other than maybe for the sole reason that it’s widely read and talked about in the anarchist community.

The full-length book I mention but neglected to put on screen at the very end of the primitivism section is called War before Civilization by Laurence Keeley.

The Peter Gelderloos book on early state formation that I mentioned around 1:15:08 but neglected to mention the title of is “Worshiping Power” (2017).

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5 replies »

  1. Thanks for posting it on the site!
    For ATS readers: the description that Keith copy-pasted under the YouTube video thumbnail is the description for the mutualism video itself; if you’re more interested in the anthology of ATS essays, click the first link under the date of Oct. 12. A clickable table of contents for the anthology should be available in the normal place you would find one, depending on if you’re opening the anthology in a browser tab or in a PDF reader like Adobe.

  2. In the video in part 6, you could have mentioned “A Spontaneous Order” by Chase Rachels, which is more concise and informative than “For A New Liberty” by Murray Rothbard, which is also an important book, but I don’t know if ancoms that you recommended it for would read it. It’s long and it’s not just theory, it’s also history.

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