This list builds on a list created by William Gillis by adding more texts.
Anyone is welcome to propose edits, like adding or deleting texts or updating the introduction. You’re also welcome to make your own list showing your own take on the most important texts in each category. The more lists the better, so people can compare, contrast, and argue over who has the best read on the various anarchist spaces.
some lowly archivists
A New General Anarchist Reading List
Basically MOST Expected Reading In The Modern Movement
Post-left Anarchy & Insurrectionary Anarchy
Mutualism / Left-Market Classic
Primitivism And General Anticiv
Particularly Notable Non-Anarchist Leftist Influences & Occasional Travellers
Below is a quickly sketched map of texts with importance and influence in anarchist spaces. As such we have included texts that all the librarians dislike, but texts we recognize have a lot of influence on anarchists.
Too often bibliographies of anarchism are wildly biased documents clearly pushing a specific party line or actively trying to re-write history by ignoring major texts and inflating minor ones. This is an attempt to map out anarchism warts-and-all, not anarchism as we might like it to eventually sort out. We believe in providing people with accurate maps to expand their agency, and perhaps that will better inform conversations. Especially as so many new people interested in anarchism today are so disconnected from the prior culture and movement.
Basically MOST Expected Reading In The Modern Movement
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Why Misogynists Make Great Informants — Courtney Desiree Morris
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How Nonviolence Protects The State — CrimethInc.
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Betrayal — Words to Fire Press
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Come Hell Or High Water — Delfina Vannuci & Richard Singer
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Against The Logic Of The Guillotine — CrimethInc
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10 Points On The Black Bloc — Harsha Walia
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Continuing Appeal Of Nationalism — Fredy Perlman
Good Intro Books
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The Black Bloc Papers — The Green Mountain Anarchist Collective, et al.
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Anarchy Works — Peter Gelderloos
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From Democracy To Freedom — CrimethInc.
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Anarchism And Other Essays — Emma Goldman
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Anarchy: What It Is and Why Pop Culture Loves It — Kim Kelly
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Anarchism And Its Aspirations — Cindy Milstein
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Life Without Law: An introduction to anarchist politics — Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness
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Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! — David Graeber
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Anarchy 101 — dot matrix
Movement Histories
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Living My Life — Emma Goldman
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Durruti — Abel Paz
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The First International and the Birth of the Anarchist Movement — Robert Graham
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Prison Memoirs Of An Anarchist — Alexander Berkman
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To Destroy Domination In All Its Forms — Julia Tanenbaum
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A Historical Scholarly Collection of Writings on the Earth Liberation Front — Anthony J. Nocella, et al.
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A Shorter History of a Northwest E.L.F. Cell — Tides of Flame
General Classic Theory
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Mutual Aid — Peter Kropotkin
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Ethics: Origin and Development — Pëtr Kropotkin
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Nationalism and Culture — Rudolf Rocker
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Revolution and Other Writings — Gustav Landauer
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God and the State — Michail Bakunin
General Modern Theory
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The Possibility Of Cooperation — Michael Taylor
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Utopia Of Rules — David Graeber
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Debt — David Graeber
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The Dawn of Everything — David Graeber and David Wengrow
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Seeing Like A State — James C. Scott
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Weapons Of The Weak — James C. Scott
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Worshipping Power — Peter Gelderloos
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In Defense of Anarchism — Robert Paul Wolff
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The Politics Of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism and Anarchism — L Susan Brown
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People without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy — Harold Barclay
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Marx: A Radical Critique — Alan Carter
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Anarchism: A Theoretical Analysis — Alan Ritter
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Home Rule — Nandita Sharma
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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas — Ursula K. Le Guin
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Joyful Militancy — carla bergman and Nick Montgomery
Post-left Anarchy & Insurrectionary Anarchy
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Armed Joy — Alfredo M. Bonanno
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The Anarchist Tension — Alfredo M. Bonanno
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Anarchy In The Age Of Dinosaurs — The Curious George Brigade
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Days Of War Nights Of Love — CrimethInc.
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Insurrectional Anarchism: A Reader — The Bakto Group
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Killing King Abacus (zine/mag)
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The Master’s Tools — Tom Nomad
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The Abolition of Work — Bob Black
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TAZ — Hakim Bey
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Queer Ultraviolence — Fray Baroque and Tegan Eanelli
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At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics — Anonymous
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Stories of the Bear and Racoon People — Aragorn!
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¡Punky Mauri Presente!: 10 Years After the Death in Action of Mauricio Morales — Publicación Madre Tierra
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The Prison Letters of Luciano “Tortuga” Pitronello — Luciano Pitronello
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The Impossible, Patience: Critical Essays 2007–2013 — Alejandro de Acosta
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Insurgencies (mag)
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Murder Of Crows (mag)
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AJODA (mag)
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The Anvil Review (mag)
Anarchist Communism Classic
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What Is Anarcho-communism — Alexander Berkman
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At The Cafe — Errico Malatesta
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An Anarchist Programme — Errico Malatesta
Anarcho-Syndicalism Classic
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Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism — Rudolf Rocker
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Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and Practice — Tom Wetzel
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Fighting for ourselves: Anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle — Solidarity Federation
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An Anarchist FAQ — The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective
Platformism Classic
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Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists — Dielo Truda (Workers’ Cause)
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Manifesto of Libertarian Communism — Federation Communiste Libertaire
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About the Platform — Barikád Kollektíva
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Towards a Fresh Revolution — Friends of Durruti
Platformism Modern
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Black Anarchism: A Reader — Jon Bekken
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The Strategy of Especifismo — Juan Carlos Mechoso (Uruguayan Anarchist Federation–FAU)
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The Global Influence of Platformism Today — Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists
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Social Anarchism and Organisation — Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro
Mutualism / Left-Market Classic
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Proudhon Reader — Iain McKay (ed.)
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Instead Of A Book — Benjamin R. Tucker
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No Treason — Lysander Spooner
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What Is Mutualism — Clarence Lee Swartz, in collaboration with The Mutualist Associates
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The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand — Kevin Carson
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Studies In Mutualist Political Economy — Kevin Carson
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Organization Theory — Kevin Carson
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Markets Not Capitalism — Various Authors
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Homebrew Industrial Revolution — Kevin Carson
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Exodus — Kevin Carson
Christian Anarchism Classic
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What I Believe — Leo Tolstoy
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The Kingdom Of God Is Within You — Leo Tolstoy
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Jesus Was An Anarchist — Elbert Hubbard
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Loaves and Fishes — Dorothy Day
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The Book Of Ammon — Ammon Hennacy
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Anarchy and Christianity — Jacques Ellul
Primitivism And General Anticiv
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The Technological Society — Jacques Ellul
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Against His-story, Against Leviathan — Fredy Perlman
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The Reproduction of Daily Life — Fredy Perlman
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Elements Of Refusal — John Zerzan
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Future Primitive — John Zerzan
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Against Civilization — ed. John Zerzan
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Running On Emptiness — John Zerzan
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Against The Megamachine — David Watson
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Green Anarchist — Of GANDALF trial infamy. This publication is on the library’s wishlist
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Green Anarchy — Anthologized as Uncivilized
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Black Seed — Anthologized as Not on Any Map and Where the Absence Is
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Do or Die! — Voices from the ecological resistance, 1993–2003. Desert followed. Anthologized as Cracks in a Grey Sky
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Return Fire (magazine)
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Letters of Insurgents — Sophia Nachalo and Yarostan Vochek
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Having Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman’s Fifty Years — Lorraine Perlman
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Land and Freedom: An Open Invitation — Seaweed
Feminism Classic
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Those Who Marry Do Ill — Voltairine De Cleyre
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Anarchy and the Sex Question — Emma Goldman
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Marriage and Love — Emma Goldman (1914)
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Sex Slavery — Voltairine de Cleyre
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The Red Virgin — Louise Michel
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Rebel in a Black Dress — Séverine
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Uncivil Liberty — Ezra Heywood
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Charlotte Wilson, the “Woman Question”, and the Meanings of Anarchist Socialism in Late Victorian Radicalism — Susan Hinely
Feminism Modern
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Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader — Dark Star (ed.)
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Socialism, Anarchism and Feminism — Carol Ehrlich
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Breaking the Waves — Romina Akemi and Bree Busk
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Insurrections at the Intersections — Abbey Volcano and J. Rogue
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Coming to Terms — Theresa Warburton
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Against the Gendered Nightmare — baedan
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The Revolution Starts at Home edited by Ching-In Chen, Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
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Confronting Manarchism — Anonymous
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Anti-Fascism Against Machismo — Petronella Lee
Social Ecology
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Post-Scarcity Anarchism — Murray Bookchin
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The Ecology of Freedom — Murray Bookchin
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Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism — Murray Bookchin
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Ecofascism — Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier
Egoism
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The Unique And It’s Property — Max Stirner
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Stirner’s Critics — Max Stirner
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The Anarchists: A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century — John Henry Mackay
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Toward the Creative Nothing — Renzo Novatore
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The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything — For Ourselves
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Against The Logic Of Submission — Wolfi Landstreicher
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Willful Disobedience — Wolfi Landstreicher
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I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite! — John Moore
Nihilist Anarchism
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Nihilism, Anarchy, and the 21st century — Aragorn!
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Pistols Drawn (publisher)
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Little Black Cart (publisher)
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Desert — Anonymous
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Blessed Is The Flame — Serafinski
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baeden — baedan
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Atentat — Various Authors
Particularly Notable Non-Anarchist Leftist Influences & Occasional Travellers
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Society Of The Spectacle — Guy Debord
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The Revolution of Everyday Life — Raoul Vaneigem
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Caliban & The Witch — Silvia Federici
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The Many Headed Hydra — Linebaugh and Rediker
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Change The World Without Taking Power — John Holloway
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The Coming Insurrection — Invisible Committee
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Theory Of Bloom — Tiqqun
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Empire — Hardt & Negri
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Everything Must Go!: The Abolition of Value — Bruno Astarian & Gilles Dauvé
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Nihilist Communism — Monsieur Dupont
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Democratic Confederalism — Abdullah Öcalan
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Capital As Power — Bichler & Nitzan
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Xenofeminism — Laboria Cuboniks
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A Cyborg Manifesto — Donna Haraway
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To our friends — The Invisible Committe
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When Insurrections Die, 1917–1937 — Gilles Dauvé
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Ediciones Inéditas Anthology — Ediciones Inéditas
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The Self-Abolition of the Proletariat As the End of the Capitalist World — Proletarios Revolucionarios