Patterns of Anarchy - A Collection of Writings on the Anarchist Tradition - Leonard I. Krimerman and Lewis Perry.pdf

It is the aim of this book to clarify and analyze the various traditions that together make up the corpus of anarchist thought and inform anarchists' recommendations for the renovation of society.Grouping writings by past and present libertarians, both European and American, around topics of central interest to all of them, the editors have illuminated both the variety and the underlying unity of anarchist traditions. One section brings together criticisms that anarchists of different schools have made of socialism, defining the distance that separates anarchism from a movement with which it has often been mistakenly confounded. Another portion of the book is devoted to critiques and proposals relating to education, a field of great concern to libertarian thinkers and one inwhich their ideas have utomost relevance today. And, to facilitate a just appraisal, the editiors have included a number of cogent attacks upon various anarchist positions


By Craig R Ceely on December 31, 2013

If you're interested in pursuing an overview of the classics of anarchist literature, this book is the place to begin. This volume, while somewhat small, is very comprehensive. You'll find the classic names -- Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy -- as well as some of the prominent moderns (Goodman, "Senex").

But there's a bit of a pleasant surprise included here: the publishers claim that the book contains some anarchist critiques of socialism, which is true, but one manner by which this is done is by including two of the principle exponents of the 19th century American individualist anarchist tradition, Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker.

You won't find anyone from the "Austrian" tradition of economics here, no Murray Rothbard or Walter Block or Hans-Hermann Hoppe. This book was published back in 1966. But that aside, you'll find it quite comprehensive and useful. Easy to award five stars to this one.

(The vendor supplying this out-of-print book in my case, owls books.com, sent me a copy that I found to be in slightly better condition than was claimed. That was also a pleasant surprise!)