Max Nettlau, born on the 30th of April in 1865, was an anarchist historian whose biographical subjects included Bakunin, Malatesta, and Élisée Reclus. His enormous collection of primary materials is held by the International Institute of Social History.
Max Nettlau was born in Neuwaldegg (Austria) to an affluent family. Nettlau's skepticism of state authority began at a young age; his memoirs state that, even as a child, he 'somehow considered the supporter of any government system as a seriously defective person'.
Formally, Nettlau studied linguistics, authoring his doctoral thesis on the Welsh language. While a student in London, he became a member of the Socialist League, the only organization he was ever to join according to the International Institute of Social History (IISG).
As an anarchist activist, Nettlau wrote articles for John Most's Freiheit and befriended famous anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin, Elisée Reclus, and Errico Malatesta.
Nettlau was an avid collector of materials of social movements. Not just manuscripts by anarchist authors (although original texts by Bakunin became a part of his collection), but the actual pamphlets, bulletins, and papers of social movements themselves.
Among Nettlau's works as an author are the first major biography of Michael Bakunin, biographies of anarchists Elisée Reclus and Errico Malatesta, and a seven volume work on the history of anarchism. A significantly shorter, one volume version is available in English as "A Short History of Anarchism".
In 1935, Nettlau sold his archive (described by the IISH as "enormous") to the newly found International Institute of Social History, where it remains to this day.
Nettlau died 1944 from stomach cancer in Amsterdam, having fled his native Austria follow the country's "Anschluss" to Nazi Germany in 1938.
"Do I want to propose my own system? Not at all! I am an advocate of all systems, i.e. of all forms of government that find followers."
- Max Nettlau in "PANARCHY. A Forgotten Idea of 1860" (1905)
A Short History of Anarchism by Max Nettlau
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Unjust Depths Interlude II posting, pt2
II.4:After Bloch's little humiliation kink sesh we get Maya and the gang doing the Murati thing where they've never seen the class divide before, made more funny by how Serrano is literally divided vertically by class. Nice to see her order some heads smashed by rifle butts and such, and now we get to see the liberation!
A liberation effort which has cool prison abolition beats, but quickly turns briefly goofy alongside Marceau and Nadia's awoo-nyaa antics. Newly liberated Mayor's office in an Imperial hellhole? Gay sex.
Man the liberation is like a fuckin' disaster relief effort though, for what was ostensibly a functioning society. Loads of people freed from the Empire's prisons, stock taken of inadequate housing and living conditions, fuckloads of rations handed out. It might look like this if my town was spontaneously taken over by socialists (
) too. If near any town or city in an imperial core country were. Even in the "less bad" ones, probably, homelessness being such a problem in North America as a whole lately.
Hey wait this is just like real life, right now! I can look out my window and see that, near enough! Madiha put the man-made horrors in the famous online webnovel, nice
II.5: ~~Meow, nyaa~~
New Karach Station is neat because it was a literal architectural symbol of Imperial slavery and industry, and the Union turned it inside out with the help of its Shimii populace, turning cramped under-seafloor living spaces into storefronts, distribution centres and such. The above-seafloor portion got turned into the living space for its cat residents, which is neat - turns out all this bullshit the Empire ordered built by back-breaking labour can be repurposed to cool and liberating ends, I dig it.
Good to see that Ahwalia's entire faction is apparently as fuckin racist as the Bosporan Anarchists are, and getting the lowdown on Omarov's revolutionary actions and his proposal to join the Union shows the rest of those clowns how it's done right: not being a fuckin racist coloniser weirdo. Mutual respect, even. There's not actually a good reason for the Bosporans or the Ahwalian faction to be derisive and bigoted toward their Shimii neighbours, they just can't help it, I guess. It strikes me again how the anarchists just barged into Khaybar Pass and refused to really consider its people's needs and requirements, letting one of their envoys be a racist freak. Sucks to suck.
So I like seeing what a good outcome looks like instead, II.5 kinda serves as a mirror to the Khaybar Pass chapters, bears for the reader the benefits of intersectionality. I was gonna end it there but Oh man, Lehner
Tale as old as time: Fashy Daddy dealing with metalworkers on strike in the wake of his fleet getting yeeted has to call in his personal militia to break the strike, except the militia-leader is his child and trans faildaughter whom he's weird and transphobic toward. My favourite kind of guy, floods my mind with images of Natasha from The Last Girl Scout. There is always a fashy trans faildaughter in these things, I suppose. Unfunny! I wonder what her fate will be!
With that, I am onto Anthology Two, real Weltgeist hours who up? Smash that upbear button for more, hopefully shorter liveblogging about a smash-hit best-selling webnovel.