Now and After

Now and After, also known as The ABC of Communist Anarchism, is Berkman's lucid primer on anarchist communism, written to answer the practical question of how a free society might be built after capitalism and the state. Proceeding in a direct, conversational style, it defines authority, wage labor, revolution, and voluntary cooperation with unusual clarity, often anticipating objections from skeptical readers. Emerging from the post-1917 crisis of socialism, the book belongs to the great tradition of political catechisms and radical pamphleteering, yet it is less dogma than ethical argument. Alexander Berkman (1870-1936), a Russian-born Jewish anarchist who emigrated to the United States, brought to the work a life of activism, imprisonment, exile, and disillusionment. His years among American labor radicals, his fourteen-year imprisonment after the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick, and his later experience of Bolshevik repression in revolutionary Russia sharpened his distrust of centralized power and his insistence on liberty as socialism's condition. This book is recommended to readers seeking a clear, historically grounded entrance into anarchist thought. It rewards both newcomers and specialists with its moral urgency, pedagogical patience, and enduring challenge to imagine justice without domination.