Available at Warbler Press

Why anarchism? And why a manifesto? Anarchism is commonly viewed as an outdated and wholly impractical idea. Worse, it has an accursed reputation for advocating chaos, violence, and destruction. The aim of An Anarchist’s Manifesto is to convince readers of the exact opposite: that  anarchism is the most adaptive, humane, intelligent, singly inclusive proposal that we, as social animals, have ever envisioned. 

In the bracing tradition of the manifesto, Glenn Wallis “makes public” the values informing the anarchist way of life—order, equality, cooperation, mutual support, and a vitalizing rejection of  authoritarianism, oppression, and exploitation. Offering examples of anarchism in action that are sure to surprise, An Anarchist’s Manifesto inspires even the most skeptical readers to experiment with these values in their own lives. Along the way, it offers a succinct account of anarchism’s historical blights of violence and quixotic utopianism.

This is an essential book for anyone who desires to contribute to a future worth living.

Glenn Wallis’s Manifesto presents a powerful, eloquent, and eminently practical case for anarchism. This is a book that one could very usefully pass on to a neighbor, if that neighbor is inspired by values like love, respect, care, mutual aid, sharing, equality, and freedom.  The book will win over many through its simple and profound message that “anarchy” is in no way alien to ordinary people, but is, rather, something that we find in the most admirable ideals and practices all around us. Wallis shows that “a better world is possible” because it is and has been quite actual—at many points in history, in many places today, and most significantly, in our own lives. —John Clark, author of The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism and The Philosophical Anarchism of William Godwin 

Anarchy—free cooperation among equals—is a principle of everyday life. It also shapes disobedient communities' struggles against oppression, looking forward to a social order without rulers or classes. Glenn Wallis writes down to earth and up to the minute, a manifesto in the best tradition of Emma Goldman and Colin Ward. If you are not an anarchist (yet?)—this book is for you. —Uri Gordon, author of Anarchy, State and Revolution and Anarchy Alive!

"The spirit of anarchism lives!  An Anarchist’s Manifesto is a perfect introduction and reframing of a much maligned and misunderstood idea. Glenn Wallis’s timely and beautifully written book is full of insight, warmth – and hope. The Manifesto appears like the visit of an old friend on a dark winter’s night!" —Stuart Smithers, Professor of Religious Studies at University of Puget Sound, contributing editor at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and editor of Black Box: A Record of the Catastrophe

"An Anarchist’s Manifesto is very incisive book, up-to-date, carefully researched and well-written, and, above all, persuasive.  Written for a hypothetical liberal with an open mind, it aims to persuade her to go much further and become an anarchist. Glenn Wallis, whose background is in Buddhism, directly answers the charges of anarchist violence and impracticability.  Mainly written from a USA perspective, he adroitly combines action and theory – praxis - and brings out simple, everyday anarchist designs, making clear  in the process that it is for direct democracy, social order, and mutual aid and against capitalism, government and the state as well as all forms of overbearing authority, domination and hierarchy.          

An Anarchist’s Manifesto does not offer a detailed program—even if that be possible—but makes a very engaging case for anarchism as eminently practical and urgently relevant today." —Peter Marshall, author of Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, Riding the Wind: Liberation Ecology for a New Era, and William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary.

Glenn Wallis's anarchist manifesto is a gentle, undogmatic exploration of anarchist practice. It explains how an anarchist articulation of shared values can transform failing democratic institutions and unjust systems of organization. This is not an conventional manifesto: there is no elaborate policy programme or list of empty promises. It calls for the recovery of an anarchist sensibility as the bulwark against relentless capitalist exploitation and corrupt, lawless government. —Ruth Kinna, Member of the Anarchism Research Group at Loughborough University UK, former co-convenor of the Anarchist Studies Network and co-editor of the journal Anarchist Studies

"In this seductive stroll through the realms of philosophy, history, and everyday life, Wallis guides the curious toward a meeting with anarchy—one of today's most powerful but maligned political convictions. Whether it leads you to raise a black flag or merely to raise an eyebrow, An Anarchist's Manifesto will leave you with little doubt about which side you're on." —ak thompson, author of Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt

This lucid and incisive manifesto—in the full force of the term—provides a clear articulation of anarchism: what it is, what it is not, and why it is our best chance at reclaiming our world from the ravages of capitalism, exploitation, and authoritarianism. Glenn Wallis’s An Anarchist’s Manifesto is unflinchingly committed to an anarchist worldview, a worldview in which anarchism as what Wallis calls a “certain way of being” engenders mutually aiding relations between people. Refusing hierarchy, oppression, coercion, and exploitation, An Anarchist’s Manifesto is concerned, first and foremost, with acting on and changing the world. This is not starry-eyed utopianism; this is anarchism, the way to a more just world.

—Marquis Bey, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, Northwestern University; author of Anarcho-Blackness: Toward a Black Anarchism

This engaging but scholarly book will appeal to both anarchist activists and readers curious about what anarchism can offer to contemporary political struggles. While not shying away from posing and exploring tough questions, Wallis offers his readers a wealth of intellectual resources and inspiring historical and contemporary examples of anarchist praxis. His impassioned manifesto both argues and demonstrates that anarchism is, above all, “a way of being in the world.” —Judith Suissa, Professor of Philosophy of Education, University College London, Institute of Education; author of Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective

Read this Manifesto! Wallis convincingly argues that anarchism is an "ungrand tradition" of ordinary people engaging in concrete communism, practiced in societies against the state and as well as in exilic spaces at the edges of capitalism. These spaces are not "somewhere else," they are everywhere around us, in the interstices of the dominant society. When a learned academic or a member of a local Marxist sect tells you that communism is our epic future or our mythic past, a "grand society" instituted only after the revolution, do give him this splendid book.

—Andrej Grubačić, Professor of Anarchist Anthropology, CIIS-San Francisco; author of Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History