Anarchy Works
Peter Gelderloos
Little Black Cart
This book uses historical and anthropological examples to show that people have, in different ways and at different times, demonstrated mutual aid, self-organization, autonomy, and horizontal decision making—that anarchy works!

Anarchism is the boldest of revolutionary social movements to emerge from the struggle against capitalism, it aims for a world free from all forms of domination and exploitation. But at its heart is a simple and convincing proposition: people know how to live their own lives and organize themselves better than any expert could. Others cynically claim that we need a government to protect us. They claim anarchy is impractical and utopian: it would never work. On the contrary, anarchist practice already has a long record, and has often worked quite well. The histories in this book show that an anarchist society can succeed at enabling all its members to meet their needs and desires.

This book takes examples from around the world, picking through history and anthropology, showing that people have, in different ways and at different times, demonstrated mutual aid, self-organization, autonomy, horizontal decision making, and so forth–the principles that anarchy is founded on–regardless of whether they called themselves anarchists or not. Too well documented to be strictly mythology, and too expansive to be strictly anthropology, this is an inspiring answer to the people who say that anarchists are utopian: a point-by-point introduction to how anarchy can and has actually worked.

Peter Gelderloos was born in Morristown, New Jersey, and grew up in Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, Korea; and Vienna, Virginia. He has also lived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and now lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Peter was studying literature, foreign languages, and anthropology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg for one and a half years until he dropped out this spring. Now he is trying to write for a living. He has been occasionally published in local and national activist publications. Peter organized with the Anti-Capitalist Convergence for the S29 Anti-War protests in Washington, DC, and attended the WEF protests in NYC and the A20 protests in DC as a demonstrator and journalist. He was involved in student organizing in high school, and he has been active with Students Against Sweatshops, and the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan. He created a boys' program for the campus feminist organization's youth empowerment program, and he helped start the Harrisonburg Food Not Bombs and the 181 Collective Space, an anarchist community center in Harrisonburg. He is the co-founder of Signal Fire, an activist website for non-activists. He is the author of How Nonviolence Protects the State.