This book - the first in a series of four - brings together a sketch of Anarchist organisation and perspectives in the twentieth century. Anarchists and syndicalists were centre stage in the history of labour movements in much of `Latin' Europe and in most of Latin America in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Syndicalists and libertarians sought to develop solidarity and workers' power, rejecting both cautious and conservative trade-unionism and their allied socialist parties. Criticising the chauvinism that engulfed the Second International and its most powerful section, German Social-Democracy, they campaigned for class solidarity across frontiers and worked to subvert the discipline that bound soldiers to imperialist states. The second part of this book describes international and national campaigns against militarism and war. Libertarians investigated democratic, modern and scientific ideas and challenged obscurantist, religious and authoritarian conventions. They sought to focus and organise the strength of working people whose voices could not be registered in parliamentary politics, working at a time when many working people had no right to vote, and also sometimes, challenged patriarchal gender relations. This is the first of four: 1. Anarchist Perspectives in Peace and War, 1900 -1918 2. Anarchist Perspectives: Syndicalism, Revolution and Fascism, 1917-1930 3. Anarchist Perspectives: Revolution in Spain, 1931-1939 4. Anarchist Perspectives after the Second World War

Bakunin was a propagator of Anarchistic Socialism and an active promoter of the International Workers' Association (IWA). He argued for International workers' solidarity, change involving rural and industrial workers, and a Libertarian or Anarchist form of Socialism with federated accountable democratic organisations responsible to the grassroots, rather than hierarchical state structures. He rejected electoral politics that made working people serve the interest of middle- and upper-class professional politicians.This book brings together a selection of texts: letters, a lecture, newspaper articles, finished and unfinished works. The selection begins in 1868, the year Bakunin moved to Geneva and became a member of the local section of the IWA. Bakunin discusses the development of politics in and around the IWA. Many of these texts appear here in English for the first time.

Some of the voices in this book came to oppose World War I after reflecting on experience, others opposed it on principle before a shot was fired--they may have been few in number, but gradually their influence rose. This anthology presents diverse voices of men and women who questioned and opposed the war: liberals, radicals and pacifists, anarchists and socialists, soldiers and noncombatants. Featured writers include: James Connolly, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Keir Hardie, Jean Jaures, Louis Lecoin, V I Lenin, John Maclean, Errico Malatesta, Sylvia Pankhurst, Siegfried Sassoon. They are American, Asian, British, French, German, Irish, Italian, and Russian. Some of the texts are newly translated or appear in English the first time.