Everyday Anarchism

About the Book

In Spain and Argentina during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anarchists sought to build their ideal society in the present rather than wait for the revolution. The radicals built their daily lives around their beliefs—a far-sighted cultural project that shaped education, family life, leisure time, and moral values.

Nathaniel Andrews looks at life in four communities to explore how anarchists fused radical politics with the everyday. As Andrews shows, anarchists created networks across the Atlantic that not only shared people and ideas, but practices, too. Small actions—picnics, childrearing, using time differently—became a part of pursuing larger political goals. But these practices also revealed tensions within the movement by highlighting the gap separating ideas and actions, particularly in matters of gender.

Vivid and surprising, Prefiguring Utopia reveals a daring program to model a radical society within the very world anarchism hoped to transform.