notes on a radical pamphlet #2: Everything You Wanted To Know About Anarchy (But Were Afraid To Ask)

I recently visited Glasgow for the first time, a distinctly different place from everywhere I’d previously been to in the UK – more akin to a British Montreal than the colder Liverpool I’d been expecting. The city is littered/studded (choose your meaning-laden verb as per your politics) with radical bookshops, so – naturally – I returned to the woeful South with a stack of reading material. Hence begins another… occasional series…

Published by Active Distribution and littered with typos that seem to replicate historic printing errors from earlier, pre-digital editions of this, Everything You Wanted To Know About Anarchy (But Were Afraid To Ask) is far from the sleek and pleasing object of 20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity. But that isn’t, of course, its point or purpose: this is an Anarchism 101-type text, absolutely not something that is intended to be treasured and hoarded, but something that is intended to be passed around and shared, a blunt and engaging introduction, rather than a course of study. (If that’s what you want, check out The Government of No One by Ruth Kinna.)

As seemingly with all Active Distribution texts, there is plenty of evidence and fact, clarity and definition, honesty and optimism and directness. There are answers here to many of the FAQs of anarchism (e.g. what do you do about “dangerous” people; “who cleans the toilets?” etc), as well as discussions of historical and contemporary (to the 1980s-ish, when the book is from) examples of anarchist or near-anarchist practice in action. There is discussion of the Spanish civil war and of pre-Columbian North America as key periods evidencing the real possibilities of state/government-free living (in one case (obvs) very brief and stopped by fascists, but in the other example very very very long-standing and only stopped by total and intentional genocide from external parties with excessively more efficient weaponry as well as nasty European diseases).

It is, as all texts by anarchists and about anarchy remain, warmly optimistic and significantly weighted in a pragmatic, wise, thoughtful and ultimately kind (slash generous, if you’re explicitly against notions of positivity and potential, better, futures that don’t need to repeat the failures of the past): anarchist thought states that people, that humans, aren’t inherently cruel, avaricious, aggressive and mean (because we’re not), but that our current society is set up, established, maintained, in such a way that these behaviours are not only normalised and standardised, but are essentialised.

The anonymous author of this radical pamphlet states: “Before the revolution it is not possible simply to choose to live as though you were free. Society will not let you.” They repeat, in the final pages of the text that there are many many many “problems which come from trying to live freely [in] an unfree society.”

As with all but the most impenetrably academic (or actually not anarchistic at all) writing about anarchy, it is deeply compelling and speaks statements that are considered to be societal untruths that – when given consideration by anyone who isn’t a cold, cruel POS who’s already catastrophically rich or naively believes they one day will be – make far more sense than any of the bullshit capitalistic bullshit we are aggressively indoctrinated with moment by moment on this sick and getting sicker planet.

It also, again, as all these anarchist texts do, mentions the importance of community and collaboration and working together with other people. I should really try and have some friends. I should really try and have community. Maybe it is the absence of this, more than anything else, that makes me so fucking miserable every second of the day that all I do is wish for death.

Order Everything You Wanted To Know About Anarchy (But Were Afraid To Ask) direct from Active Distribution

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scott manley hadley aka SOLID BALD live

Here’s a video of me recently performing at the prestigious (it has a Wikipedia page) comedy night, Quantum Leopard. Listen to how much fun the crowd is having. You could have that much fun, too!

Forthcoming gigs include the following – there may/will be others:

18th February 2026, 7.30pm: Laughable, Wanstead Library

26th February 2026: Mirth Control, Bexhill-on-Sea

12th March 2025: BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER 30 MIN WIP at Glasgow International Comedy Festival

26th March 2026, 7.30pm: Comedy @ Cosmic, Plymouth

May 2026: BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER FULL LENGTH WIP at the BRIGHTON FRINGE