Talya (she/her) reviewed Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos
despite all the criticism, this is a good book
4 stars
this is a four star book. it's good, the author has clearly done their work, it's nuanced and it presents good theory. hold all of that in mind because now i'm gonna be negative.
due to the nature of the work, pretty much all given examples are simplified, and some of them (or at least those i know well enough to notice) have occasional omissions or errors. this however doesn't hurt the conclusion, especially since the conclusion is nuanced - not "humans are anarchists" but "humans can do anarchism", not "anarchism always works" but "anarchism can work". (for the curious folks, the specific examples i'm thinking of are the Israeli Kibbutzim, Wikipedia and the island of Rapa Nui.) the weakest chapter by far, at least in my opinion, is chapter 4 - environment, though possibly the fact i've recently read "The Solutions are Already Here" (a five star book specifically …
this is a four star book. it's good, the author has clearly done their work, it's nuanced and it presents good theory. hold all of that in mind because now i'm gonna be negative.
due to the nature of the work, pretty much all given examples are simplified, and some of them (or at least those i know well enough to notice) have occasional omissions or errors. this however doesn't hurt the conclusion, especially since the conclusion is nuanced - not "humans are anarchists" but "humans can do anarchism", not "anarchism always works" but "anarchism can work". (for the curious folks, the specific examples i'm thinking of are the Israeli Kibbutzim, Wikipedia and the island of Rapa Nui.) the weakest chapter by far, at least in my opinion, is chapter 4 - environment, though possibly the fact i've recently read "The Solutions are Already Here" (a five star book specifically about anarchism and the environment) plays a factor. the strongest, by contrast, is the first, possibly due to being the most nuanced. to me, of all chapters, it is the one that best speaks the important message of this book: anarchy works, we just have to choose it. perhaps my biggest issue with the book is the one i least know how to fix - that it sits in the uncomfortable space of intending to convince while by its very nature being mostly read by those already convinced. that is sadly the nature of almost every theory book under the sun, anarchist or not, and the ways to deal with it are either acknowledge this fact and aim it only at those already within the movement (as even those already in on an idea still always benefit from theory), or ignore it and hope your book becomes a gateway for at least some newcomers, somehow. this book did what to me seems the more common choice among anarchist, and chose the latter.
despite all my criticisms, this is a good book. even those who already read a bunch of theory like me can benefit from the new outlooks and varieties of anarchism offered by this book. there's better books talking specifically about anarchist organising, about anarchist economies, about anarchist ecology, about anarchist history throughout the world. but this one does a good job talking about them all at once. this is a four star book.
