Means and Ends is a new overview of the revolutionary strategy of anarchism in Europe and the United States between 1868 and 1939. Zoe Baker clearly and accessibly explains the ideas that historical anarchists developed in order to change the world. This includes their views on direct action, revolution, organization, state socialism, reforms, and trade unions. Throughout, she demonstrates that the reasons anarchists gave for supporting or opposing particular strategies were grounded in a theoretical framework—a theory of practice—which maintained that, as people engage in activity, they simultaneously change the world and themselves. This theoretical framework was the foundation for the anarchist commitment to the unity of means and ends: the means that revolutionaries propose to achieve social change have to involve forms of activity which transform people into individuals who are capable of, and driven to, both overthrow capitalism and the state and build a free society. The consistent heart of anarchism was the idea that anarchist ends can only be achieved through anarchist means. Cutting through misconceptions and historical inaccuracies, Baker draws upon a vast assortment of examples to show how this simple premise underpinned anarchist attempts to put theory into action.
![means and ends book cover](https://files.libcom.org/files/styles/small_wide/public/2024-07/means%20and%20ends%20hd.jpg?itok=C7Kg3CLm)
Huge thanks to Zoe Baker for permission to host this text here. If you like this book, please buy it here from AK Press. And please support Zoe on patreon here. You can also check out her YouTube channel and follow her on Twitter.
Attachments
Zoe Baker - Means and Ends V2.pdf
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Comments
No academic publisher?…
No academic publisher? Wonder why. Do we also have the permission of Dr. Anarchy/Zoe Baker to post this here?
adri wrote: No academic…
Imagine being an 'anarchist' and beliving in copyright
I don't believe in copyright…
I don't believe in copyright and make my material freely available, but as we don't live in an anarchist-communist society, AK Press has bills to pay (not least for printing).
I hope everyone who downloads this pdf will buy a print version from your local radical bookshop or from AK Press directly -- support anarchist publishers and bookshops.
Heya, so Zoe Baker has a…
Heya, so Zoe Baker has a message for libcom from twitter:
Zoe Baker @anarchopac
Y'all might want to reach out.
Hi @libcomorg. Noticed the…
You can often tell a lot about a person and their works by just looking at the sort of crowd they attract. It's also sort of funny how the word "based" seems to have been embraced by some Zoomer anarchists (or maybe just morons, irrespective of generation?) when it had been a popular slang term within the alt-right and other right-wing circles.
You can often tell a lot…
What is that supposed to mean? That Zoe Baker is under the influence of secret or unconscious alt-right tendencies? Am I allowed to use the phrase "hot take"? Because this is definitely one of those.
That Zoe Baker is under the…
Who's claiming that? I'm just saying that I don't think much of Baker or her admirers. The book itself doesn't seem particularly innovative. It's just another anarchist account of anarchist thought ("theory" is too generous of a word) that doesn't really introduce any new sources or archival materials. The thesis that anarchists have always been guided by some kind of "theoretical framework" is also quite suspect and suggests a coherency and consistency that anarchism has never really had in my view (unless you can point to anarchists talking about this particular "theoretical framework," which you can't—Baker is just making it up).
I also don't particularly care for the partisan anarchist accounts of history that we're all familiar with and that are always intended to vindicate anarchists and make Marxists look bad, regardless of the reality of whatever historical event. Just taking one minor example, Baker inaccurately describes the infamous Nechaev as just an "acquaintance" of Bakunin, rather than a close personal friend and someone who Bakunin cooperated with on quite a number of works/pamphlets. Speaking of Bakunin's relationship with Nechaev prior to Bakunin having broken off connections with the former, Paul Avrich writes in his Bakunin and Nechaev: "He [Bakunin] saw in Nechaev the ideal revolutionary conspirator, the herald of a new generation whose energy, determination, and intransigence would overthrow the imperial order" (9). Bakunin was not involved in some of Nechaev's more nefarious activities (such as the threatening letter to Liubavin in order to get Bakunin out of a contract in which he was supposed to translate Marx's Capital), but the word "acquaintance" is clearly intentional here and serves to distance Bakunin from Nechaev and his ideas.
The idea that you can also extract some kind of "anarchist theory" from the works of someone like Bakunin and other anarchists is also just laughable; Bakunin was not a theoretician by his own admission. He mostly just railed against authority and those so-called power-hungry Marxists throughout the bulk of his works. His criticisms of religion as being mostly reactionary were likewise quite problematic given how socialistic many Christians in the US and Europe actually were (e.g. textile workers in New England). He also didn't self-publish the vast majority of his most influential works, which were instead published and given their titles by others. In the words of Avrich again (in the preface to Sam Dolgoff's Bakunin on Anarchy):
1. He did finish Statism and Anarchy, but it was published anonymously and he never completed the second part that he mentions in the text. I would also consider it a completed book.
Am I allowed to use the…
Chill out fam. You know all my takes are fire.
The thesis that anarchists…
You just sound like someone who isn’t really familiar with actual anarchists, past and present, and you probably don’t even understand what anarchism is. Anarchism is just a political position whose adherents do have some common ideas about how the world work and what to do about it. It is not a proposal for a ‘theoretical framework’ or some theory; it is not like Marxism, which has the pretense of being an intellectual project. And it doesn’t make any sense to think of anarchism as a singular tradition, as it has historically developed into disparate tendencies, each of which does evidences strong coherency and consistency. If you are arguing that anarchist communists, for example, are incoherent as a group, then I would say you aren’t really engaging with them. I personally don’t agree with individualist anarchists but I do think they offer a coherent and consistent viewpoint. What I say about anarchists could also apply to socialists in general. It is a political position, that does imply some common ideas of how things are, but it is not a proposal of any theory.
I’m guessing you’re a Marxist, as you seem pretty defensive about it. In my view, Marxists have made themselves look bad. They try to paint Marxism as if it is equivalent to something like Darwinism. In truth, it is not some theoretical contribution to the world but rather a worship of a single man.
adri wrote: You can often…
It seems like you just can't stop talking about things you clearly know absolutely nothing about.
The fact you think the word "based" has anything to do with the alt right is hilarious, and just shows that you are very detached from popular culture.
The word "based" means "good" or "cool", and was coined by the rapper Lil B around 15 years ago, and has been in widespread use since then.
That you are trying to use people using a common word to try to tie them to fascists and Nazis is perhaps the most ridiculous thing anyone has said on this site all year.
Steve wrote: The fact you…
It was widely associated with the alt-right and the right-wing internet/meme subculture, particularly sites like 4chan. Its adoption by Zoomers is a recent development partly reflecting how much time younger people spend on the internet these days. The majority of people saying "based," "redpilled" etc. five or so years ago mostly belonged to the far-right, though I'm not sure how their use of the word "based" originally came about (nor am I particularly interested).
Nobody has accused anyone of being Nazis or belonging to the far-right. You and darren are just putting words in my mouth. The Zoomer anarchists using words like "based" are obviously not associated with the far-right. The word has just been adopted by them from this right-wing internet/meme subculture. It is also far more likely that this is the origin of Zoomer anarchists' use of the term rather than some rapper that most people are unfamiliar with. Here's Dictionary.com:
One could add to the above etymology that the word has been reappropriated by Zoomers and seems to have become a rather innocuous slang term now.
It seems like you just can't…
This applies to you to a much greater extent, if people read some of your recent posts.
I'm also a year shy of being…
I'm also a year shy of being a Zoomer myself (the date ranges for generations vary depending on the source), so it's sort of amusing being lectured on internet slang by a dinosaur like yourself.
Steve wrote: The fact you…
We can also consult Wiktionary:
Wow, it's just like I said—strange isn't it? You're so cringe Steve, big yikes.
I don't particularly like…
I don't particularly like the word "based" myself, I don't think I'd ever use it (well, except in the sense of saying that something is the basis of something, that seems fairly unobjectionable), but I also don't think I'd draw any particularly strong conclusions about Zoe Baker's work based (pun unintended but I suppose unavoidable) on the fact that someone used the word to describe her. That seems like taking the old saying about judging a book by its cover to bold new heights.
Steve wrote: The fact you…
At the risk of beating a dead horse, there's also an entire journal article on the history of the term "based" echoing what I said about how it has spread from online far-right communities (e.g. 4chan, subreddits like r/The_Donald and r/PCM, etc.) to other parts of the internet and society while losing its far-right connotations. The article notes how this depoliticized use of the word “based” only really began to pick up around 2021 and after. While the rapper McCartney (aka “Lil B”) might have been the first to refashion the term “basehead” (i.e. a term for a drug addict) into the more positive slang term “based,” his use of the term had always been restricted to a small community of users (e.g. it was particularly popular within parts of the rap and hip-hop community) and was not where the current Zoomer use of the term originated. Your claim that McCartney’s use of the term has always been in “widespread use” is simply unsubstantiated and seems more like an attempt to connect the current Zoomer use of the term to a more “savory” source, even though there is nothing really “savory” about “Lil B” at all; he’s a repulsive misogynist.[1] Here’s the article explaining how the current Zoomer use of the term “based” essentially sprang out of the right-wing meme subculture:
I’m also not sure whether you were originally claiming that the word “based” has never been associated with the far right at all. If so, then you’ve clearly been living under a rock or not paying much attention to American politics under the Trump administration.
1. Here are some of McCartney's lyrics. It is also worth pointing out that McCartney is actually straight, despite having released an album entitled I'm Gay (I'm Happy):
He has also regularly encouraged women/girls to send pictures of themselves to him over social media (often for money), in addition to creating memes out of the expression “please fuck my bitch based god.”
He might not be the far right, but I honestly wouldn’t rank him much better than them. It wouldn’t be much of an improvement if the Zoomer use of the term “based” derived from a disgusting misogynistic troll like McCartney (which it didn’t) rather than some far-right imbeciles who appropriated it.
"At the risk of beating a…
"At the risk of beating a dead horse, there's also an entire journal article on the history of the term "based" echoing what I said about how it has spread from online far-right communities (e.g. 4chan, subreddits like r/The_Donald and r/PCM, etc.) to other parts of the internet and society while losing its far-right connotations."
Hmm, could've stopped there.
I don't know why you keep…
I don't know why you keep chiming in with your uninformed comments and with your inability to read the entire discussion.