Zoe Baker

From Radical Theory and History by Zoe Baker

In 2022 I wrote an essay called Anarchism and Democracy which summarised what members of the historical anarchist movement thought about democracy and how they made collective decisions (Baker 2022). This essay was subsequently completely misunderstood by both pro-democracy and anti-democracy anarchists as saying things it does not say and which I have never said. Over the subsequent years these distortions and misinterpretations have taken on a life of their own and altered how people read and remember my essay. In parallel to these developments both old and new myths about historical anarchist views on democracy and collective decision-making have continued to spread. In this essay I shall go through these myths one by one and debunk them. Through doing so I shall expand on topics that my previous essay only briefly touched on.

From Z Network by Tom Wetzel

Zoe Baker’s book Means and Ends is a comprehensive look at the revolutionary class-struggle anarchist movement as it existed and developed in the period from the International Workingmen’s Association of 1864-78 to the defeat of the anarchist and syndicalist-inspired revolution in Spain in 1939.

From Anarchist Studies
October 10, 2023

Issue 31.2 is a special issue on 'One Hundred Years with and without Kropotkin', featuring an editorial, 5 original articles, and 5 book reviews.

Anarchist Studies Volume 31 (2023) Issue 2

From It's Going Down

Original title: “Means and Ends”: Zoe Baker on Historical Anarchist Tensions, Practice, and Action

From Anarkismo by Wayne Price

Original title: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism: Review of Zoe Baker, Means & Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States

This is an outstanding overview of the anarchist movement. It covers the period from 1868 (the approximate beginning of revolutionary anarchism as a movement) to 1939 (the defeat of the Spanish Revolution and the beginning of World War II). While anarchism has been a world movement, this book only covers European and U.S. anarchism, which has inherent limitations (also, the author admits to only reading English). Further, the text does not discuss all tendencies which have been regarded as anarchist. It does not deal with individualist or market-oriented anarchisms, nor with anarchist-pacifism nor some other trends.

from It's Going Down

Zoe Baker on Lessons from Anarchist History

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with anarchist historian and YouTuber, Zoe Baker, about lessons from anarchist history, what past struggles can teach us about the social movements of today, just what the hell an ‘anarcho-communist’ is, and how anarchists in the past have dealt with the question of organization, tactics, and strategy.