Anarchism in The Books Store

Labadie, in his activities as unionist, socialist, anarchist, and passionate social agitator, was involved in a profusion of worker and radical causes. The book follows his idiosyncratic life from a childhood among a Pottawotami tribe in the Michigan woods through his involvement in the Socialist Labor Party, Knights of Labor, Greenback movement, trades councils, typographical union, eight-hour-workday campaigns and the rise of the American Federation of Labor. The story of his relationships with Samuel Gompers, Terence Powderly, Eugene Debs, Johann Most, Benjamin Tucker, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin and the Haymarket anarchists illuminates their personalities and the flavor of the era in which they lived.

Anarchism reemerged on the world stage at the end of 1999 on the streets of Seattle, when the World Trade Organization was brought close to -collapse. Anarchist groups shared pavement space with environmen-talists, pacifists and a host of others. These new oppositional voices, broadly anticapitalist and antiglobalist, can be seen as a post-Cold War development, a rejection of the terms of the old debate between capitalism and Soviet-style communism.

Seán M. Sheehan provides an engaging introduction to what anarchism means, describing its development in political thought, the history of ideas, philosophy, theories of education and ecology, as well as film and literary criticism.

Seán M. Sheehan is a writer of history and travel books and the author of a guide to Wittgenstein.