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Hey all, I'm hoping this is the right comm for this kind of post. I'm really interested what brought my fellow lemmings to anarchism (or just radical politics in general). Was is a youtube video? A book? A conversation IRL or on the internet? For me personally it was a friend IRL who introduced me to an local anarchist collective.

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[-] phar@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago
[-] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The Conquest of Bread is a great layman explainer where a smart economist introduces to you many examples of how mutual aid and anarchist organization are not only practical but often essential, natural, and superior. It's examples are outdated (And some of it's predictions were prophetic!) but it's points are all preserved to this day.

Bullshit Jobs is a pop economism / sociology book where an anthropologist walks you through the absurdity of our modern economy, specifically our systems of employment and work, to build a case that our system is designed around backward incentives.

God and the State is a fiery call to action by one of if not the most successful anarchist political organizers in history. It is a brief but powerful calling out and condemnation of hierarchy and nation states, written before the author's falling out with Marx and organized communism (Disclaimer: The author was slightly racist, even for his time).

The Mars Triology is a sprawling three-novel scifi epic about the multigenerational colonization of Mars, featuring a rotating but interrelated ensemble cast who basically act as avatars for the various political tendencies they each represent. The author develops a "future history" of humanity, the complexity of which could go toe-to-toe with Tolkien, developing a wild pallette of libertarian, socialist, future-economist tendencies that fans out over several centuries and really gets the gears of your imagination clanking.

These are all selected as introductions to ideas. I have many more recommends but they're less "dip your toes in".

[-] phar@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Wow thank you for the list! I will get reading.

[-] merde@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

i started reading about anarchism at a very early age (14, 15?) after encountering a 2 page description of Nietzsche, Nihilism and Anarchism in an encyclopedia. I wasn't in uni yet and back then only universities had internet connection, so i had to find books.

From Proudhon to Anarcho-Communists to Stirner to even Anarcho-Capitalists(!) i've read all. Add some Dadaism and later Situationists (and after more time their inheritors Tiqqun). I thought I've met Bookchin's ideas late but apparently I've met him early through Ursula K. Le Guin (who wrote a wonderful fiction about an anarchist diaspora settling on the moon of a planet).

Not to forget thinkers/philosophers/poets (like Guattari for example, among many others) who wrote the most liberating lines without any anarchist consideration in mind.

I can't recommend books but a method: Find books that interest you and follow the citations upstream towards other books (or downstream towards their spawns or inheritors).

Now that we have Wikipedia, we're lucky to click/touch through articles and get books downloaded or delivered to our doors (if we're lucky to have doors).

Good luck to you.

this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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