Anarchist & Radical Book Club discussion

For April & May, we'll dive into Anarchy in Action by Colin Ward (author page worth a click).

From the book's description: "As Colin Ward writes in his introduction, "This book is not intended for people who had spent a lifetime pondering the problems of anarchism, but for those who either had no idea of what the word implied or knew exactly what it implied and rejected it, considering that it had no relevance for the modern world... It is not about strategies for revolution and it is not involved in speculation on the way an anarchist society would function. It is about the ways in which people organize themselves in any kind of human society, whether we care to categorize those societies as primitive, traditional, capitalist or communist.""

Ward's obituary in the Guardian: Writer, social theorist and anarchist who believed in self-sufficiency, allotments and better town planning (lol?)

I can't vouch for this link but it looks like a free download [PDF]. Anyone find another version?

I know Ward is a well-known author, so any folks who've read his other work want to fill us in? What do you think of this?

This is a brilliant book, I'm looking forwards to seeing what others think!

Yeah the link above seems to work, or if you fancy supporting one of Britain's best anarchist publishers, Freedom Press, then you can buy a physical copy here for £7.50!

I have read quite a few introductions to anarchism, but this one has eluded me. AK Press released a sort of collected works for Ward last year (Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader) which lead me to write this after I reflected on reading on it.

He's Britain's most well-known anarchist and he's covered an abundance of subjects if you take a glance at his book listing. These look interesting;

Cotters and Squatters: The Hidden History of Housing
Talking Green. Colin Ward

Was interested to see how the work compared to some of my early critiques. 

Just to kick off. I was finally able to download the pdf of Anarchy in Action, which is easily Colin Ward's best book. Someone should upload it to The Anarchist Library (which does have 3 or 4 of his books). Its value for me is that it speaks simply to a wide public about everyday problems, housing, work, play, school, etc from a common sense anarchist viewpoint, thus linking his knowledge of the anarchist classics to fairly recent social conditions (last updated in 1982 I think). It's still useful and inspiring to budding social revolutionaries.
That said I imagine this discussion will get lost in polemics, between activist types who rightly see Ward as avoiding a class analysis, and reformist middle class 'anarchists' only interested in debate.
The value for me in a re-read of Anarchy in Action is to loot it for ways to organise locally in the context of collapsing capitalism and Occupy, 15M and anarcho syndicalist iniciatives. Am I right?...

Hi M suffice to say the work should be judged on its own merits rather than dragged into a polemic or a dichotomy.

That being said, within British anarchism, Ward was based around the post-war Freedom group, which was definitely on the liberal end of anarchism. This also includes Vernon Richards, Nicholas Walters who made important contributions to a number of issues. But they stand in contrast to Albert Meltzer and Stuart Christie.

Where are those who are reading this up to?

I think it's hard to contrast this to other anarchist introductions, because Ward talks about wanting to look at things "rooted in the experience of everyday life" so it's less theoretical and heads off certain types of debates and polemics. It's terms of references are pretty parochial and localised, but at the same time it's very accessible. 

It does however try to deal with the arrival of the welfare state, but also contradictions within modernity. Taking lead on themes and addressing their implications. It's a book in many senses that needs expanding on...

But, it's short comings, strengths, weaknesses...