New Fields ― Early Reflections on Anarchism

In a career spanning nearly six decades, Max Nettlau—“the Herodotus of Anarchy”—produced a vast body of work on anarchist history, published in numerous countries and languages, while compiling one of the most impressive archives of anarchist material in existence. His best known work, A Short History of Anarchism, remains one of the standard accounts of the development of anarchist ideas. At the same time, he produced an impressive body of theoretical work, much of it in the form of internal critiques of present anarchist practices. Although essays like “Responsibility and Solidarity in the Labor Struggle” have been widely translated and disseminated, the majority of this work on anarchism’s future development remains little known. During his lifetime, only a single collection of these critiques, the Spanish-language Crítica Libertaria, saw publication. The present anthology is an attempt to at least begin to remedy that lack, drawing together English-language essays published in Freedom and Mother Earth with new translations of work originally published in French. New Fields captures the reflections, questions, and fears of Nettlau from 1895–1921, allowing modern readers both to experience something of that era and to apply these critiques to the anarchist practices of our own era.

Max Nettlau (1865–1944) was active in the European anarchist movement for six decades. Best known as a historian of anarchism and biographer of Mikhail Bakunin, Nettlau was also a sharp internal critic of anarchist strategy and tactics. Shawn P. Wilbur is a historian, translator, and curator of the Libertarian Labyrinth digital archive. His published translations and edited books include works by Emma Goldman, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Joseph Dejacque.