This is an abridged version of the Anarchist Encyclopedia . The original was a four-volume compendium of anarchist thought and analysis compiled by the great anarchist activist and writer Sébastien Faure. Within its pages can be found articles on political, social, and philosophical questions written from every point of view within the anarchist movement and by many of the most important figures of anarchism, like Faure, Max Nettlau, Emile Armand, Voline, and Errico Malatesta. It is a perfect reflection of the openness of anarchism, an unequaled assembly of the riches of the movement, and an essential text that has sadly been unavailable in English. Although much shorter, our selection reflects the depth and range of the original. Abidor's lengthy Introduction provides historical context, biographical detail about the contributors, and an overview of political philosophies covered. "Mitch Abidor is to be commended for presenting the first English translation of selections from Sébastien Faure’s incomparable Encyclopédie Anarchiste. Between 1925 and 1934, Faure published articles by the leading proponents of anarchism on a remarkable variety of topics from every major perspective—anarchist communist, syndicalist, platformist, and individualist anarchist. This book is a must read for anyone interested in anarchist ideas." —Robert Graham, author of We Do Not Fear Anarchy—We Invoke It Mitchell Abidor is a translator and writer from Brooklyn. He has published many collections of writings from the French revolutionary tradition, including Voices of the Paris Commune and A Socialist History of the French Revolution by Jean Jaurès, as well as May Made Me: An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France . Illegalism It serves no purpose to hide this, for whether we recognize it or not, there are anarchists who resolve their economic question extralegally, i.e., by methods implying attacks of property, by the regular or occasional use of different forms of violence or rue, of the practice of crafts or professions disavowed by the police and the courts. It is in vain that communist anarchist doctrinaires – and not all of them – want to disassociate themselves form illegalists, to thunder against “individual expropriation,’ which nevertheless goes all the way back to anarchism’s heroic period, the era of people like Pini, Schouppe, Ortiz, and Jacob. It is in vain that the doctrinaires of individualist anarchism, like Tucker, combat anarchist “outlawry”: there were and there always will be theoreticians of anarchist illegalism, especially in Latin countries. Before investigating what these “theoreticians” – who are above all comrades who seek to explain to us and themselves the illegalist anarchist turn of mind – say, it is appropriate to note that that the practice of illegalism is not to be preached or propagated: it offers fearsome hazards. From no point of view does it liberate. Only in exceptional circumstances does it not hinder the flourishing of individual life; one must have an exceptional temperament for illegalism not to drag one into being reduced to the rank of social waste. These reservations having been made and trumpeted, does it follow that the comrade who procures his daily bread by resorting to a craft stigmatized by custom, forbidden by the law, and punished by “justice” should not be treated as a comrade by those who accept being exploited by a boss? Taken all in all, every anarchist, adapted or not, is an illegalist, because he rejects the law. He is an illegalist and a delinquent every time he emits and propagates opinions contrary to the laws of the human environment in which he evolves. Between the intellectual illegalist and the economic illegalist there is nothing but a question of species. The illegalist anarchist claims he is every bit as much a comrade as the small shopkeeper, the town hall secretary, or the dancing master, professions that modify the economic living conditions of the current social environment no more than his does. A lawyer, a doctor, and a schoolteacher can send articles to an anarchist newspaper and give talks to small anarchist educational groups, but they nonetheless remain supporters and the supported of the archist system, which handed over to them the monopoly allowing them to exercise their profession and to whose rules and regulations they are obliged to submit if they want to continue in their profession. The law protects the exploited and the exploiter, the dominated and the dominator in their social relations with each other and, as long as they submit to them, the anarchist is as well protected n his person and his property as the archist: as long as they obey the injunctions to “the social contract” the law makes no distinction between them. Whether they want to or not, those anarchists who submit, small artisans, workers, functionaries, employees, have public authority on their side, tribunals, social conventions, official educators. This is the rewa