Albert Meltzer and the Anarchist idea

The basis of Albert’s Anarchism was the idea that working class people have the potential to change society. This put him at odds with the cheerleaders of capitalism; ‘revolutionary’ parties who wanted to capture state power on behalf of the working class and ‘progressive’ intellectuals who claimed to have reinvented Anarchism in their own image.

First published in 1981, Anarchism: Arguments for and against is the most reprinted of Albert’s writings. Albert’s first written response to an objector came in War Commentary in May 1944. The roots of this text lie in his 1968 pamphlet Aims and principles of Anarchism: an essay at defining what the Anarchist Movement is and how wide a field it covers, the book he co-wrote with Stuart Christie The Floodgates of Anarchy (published in 1970) and a series of articles on ‘objections to Anarchism’ in Black Flag in the early seventies. This final edition shows how Albert responded as the movement changed around him: he was happy to make room for some feminists, but less impressed with proponents of ‘dole autonomy’. Anarchism: Arguments for and against even turns up in academic articles, frequently (but not only) as an obstacle to some intellectual innovation.

Albert took writing seriously, as shown by in his vast output of articles and his fulminations against the Fleet Street ‘lie machine’. Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail said a newspaper columnist should affect their reader: ‘Make them laugh, make them cry, or make them angry’. Albert was happy to make people laugh, and not averse to making them angry. Beyond that, Anarchism: Arguments for and against says we should hope – but also take steps towards a free society.

KSL Collective
April 2023

We’d like to thank Lex and Euan for making this reprint possible. We have a growing selection of articles by and about Albert at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/0rxwm0 

[Foreword to the Active Distribution reprint (2023) https://www.activedistributionshop.org/product/anarchism-arguments-for-and-against-a6/ or the PDF is at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/vx0ngr ]