Ardent Press

As publishers we believe that anarchism is the lens by which the rest of the world is examined. This means that all of the ideas that are otherwise owned by the bourgeoisie are ours. To do with what we will. To consume and make our body and mind strong. Nietzsche is a figure that is both owned by our enemies and entirely ours for the taking.

This book, freely available on the Anarchist Library, attempts to do what I am not Man, I am Dynamite failed to do, integrate Nietzsche firmly into the anarchist tradition. This is a project we approve of unconditionally.

It’s a solid example of philosophical thinking without drowning in jargon, and it doesn’t make excuses for the parts of Nietzsche’s thoughts that anarchists don’t agree with.

Author: Shahin
Paper, $8.00, 5.5″x8.5″, 292 pages
Nietzsche and Anarchy from our distribution partner Little Black Cart.

Civil or Subversive: A Dark Matter Production

A collection of writings from the UK, originally produced under the title Anarchism: Civil or Subversive, these are essays and thoughts on the on-going conflict between rioters and peace police, between those who think they need to color inside the lines, and those who want to burn the coloring book up. Reproduced by Ardent Press for release on this side of the pond, with the Ardent Press inimical style (including pictures of V-masked folks picking up trash), these are passionate responses to what some might call the Left, and others might call the Civil.

Author: Dark Matter
Paper, $5.00, 5.5″x6″, 128 pages
Civil or Subversive from our distribution partner Little Black Cart.

This book, with a name from a poem by a partisan fighter, takes two things that would not necessarily seem to go together, but that, on second thought, are made for each other.

An introduction to anarcho-nihilism becomes tales of resistance in the Nazi concentration camps, almost all of which failed (in the sense that the resisters died), and for which there was never much hope that they could do anything but fail, which are then analyzed in light of anarcho-nihilism.
This book is an excellent example of taking anarcho-nihilism seriously, as a call to action that has nothing to do with the expectation that we will succeed at making the world better.

For those who are confused about anarcho-nihilism, and also for those who use the word nihilism as a trendy way to talk about the same actions that leftists have been doing for decades, this text will be an especially helpful road sign.

What does it take to resist in absolutely futile and overwhelming situations?
Inside of the Nazi concentration camps, places designed to eradicate all possibilities for resistance, inmates organized, sabotaged, and reflexively fought back against their oppressors. Within each of these stories we can find a simmering spirit of anarcho-nihilism, a tendency that challenges us to translate our feelngs of hopelessness into wild and joyous forms of attack.
Because even if we don’t stand a chance, we refuse to be led to the slaughter like sheep.

Author: Serafinski
Paper, $8.00, 5.5″x8.5″, 150 pages
Blessed is the Flame from our distribution partner Little Black Cart.

When Peter Lamborn Wilson sent us the pile of paper that eventually became this book (and the Spiritual series) we could not have been more delighted. Peter has been a writing machine for decades and it would be easy to miss out on the kind of writing that he likes best. Punchy, idiosyncratic manifestos (of a sort). This collection of Peter’s Anarchist Ephemera is filled with heart and astute observations.

All plans for “saving the world” ultimately rest on the assumption that humanity must undergo a change of heart. The paradox here is that if this change were to occur, no plans would be needed to bring about a “different world.” The change of heart, the different consciousness, would be in itself the very shift in direction, the Reversion to human and spiritual values required for “salvation.” Smash the machinic mind and there’d be no need to smash the actual machines.

Author: Peter Lamborn WIlson
Paper, $6.00, 5.5″x6″, 200 pages
Anarchist Ephemera from our distribution partner Little Black Cart.

Son of Joseph Labadie (of the famed Labadie Collection in Ann Arbor), Laurence Labadie out-distanced his father as a thinker and a polemicist, Laurence had the good luck to have been in consistent contact with some of the best writing by the American individualist anarchist tradition. Through a series of ingenious counterpoints and elaborations he managed to make of it something entirely new and much more threatening. The vanished anarchism of this deep-rooted radical tradition was the mutinous wellspring into which Labadie dipped endlessly throughout his life, but Labadie is set off from both his father and his other individualist predecessors (like Benjamin Tucker) by his confrontational tone, his sureness of purpose, and his un-matched disillusionment regarding the utter emptiness of all human endeavors.

Author: Laurence Labadie
Paper, $15.00, 5.5″x8.5″, 220 pages
Anarcho-Pessimism: The Collected Writings of Laurence Labadie from our distribution partner Little Black Cart.