ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the core concepts of anarchism as an ideology. It highlights the role played by prefiguration in the organizations, intentions, and practices of anarchist activists. The book focuses on freedom, which has often been identified as the anarchist value sine qua non. It examines the extent to which anarchism defines itself as a revolutionary doctrine, to which it embraces revolution as the vehicle for social and political transformation. The book shows how a longstanding tension between reform and revolution, and the ambivalent attitudes such a tension fosters, characterize thinking about anarchist identity and anarchist practice. It argues that anarchism has considered ecological issues more often and more deeply than other radical ideologies – an important contribution to a world facing the potentially catastrophic effects of global climate change.
