Practical Anarchy - A Guide To Self Determination is both a history lesson and a survival guide. It takes the word "anarchy" out of the gutter of tabloid headlines and puts it back where it belongs - in the everyday acts of solidarity, resistance and imagination that already shape our lives.
What if freedom didn't mean the "choice" between political parties or brands, but the courage to live without rulers? This book traces anarchism from prehistoric egalitarian societies and the Paris Commune, through punk, travellers' fields and the rise of the Internet, right up to today's struggles against capitalism, State power, surveillance, climate collapse and patriarchy.
Rather than preaching abstract theory, it draws on lived experience - off-grid life, squats, coops, music festivals, community kitchens - to show that anarchy is not chaos but cooperation without bosses. The story winds through:
- The problem with the State - violence, division, surveillance and the democratic illusion.
- The problem with capitalism and money - wage slavery, debt, advertising, AI and the climate crisis.
- The grip of religion and party politics - faiths that promise salvation while demanding obedience.
- Living anarchy now - disability justice, queer and trans anarchism, health, direct action, mutual aid and federation.
- Imagining a world without rulers - resource-based societies, commons, rewilding, creativity and roadmaps for transition.
This is not a utopian fantasy but a call to see what already works. From disaster solidarity to everyday cooperation, from Zapatistas to Rojava, from mutual aid groups during COVID to grassroots climate camps, Practical Anarchy shows how communities create order without rulers every day.
The tone is serious but never humourless, weaving research with stories, music, fire and gallows humour. It's written by Dicky Dread - professor, DJ, traveller, survivor - who has lived the contradictions and possibilities of life beyond the mainstream.
If you have ever wondered why the world feels broken - and how we might live differently - this book gives you the tools, stories and courage to start now. Dance with it, argue with it, laugh at it, scribble in the margins - then carry it into the streets, kitchens, forests and festivals where freedom is already being built.
Keywords for discovery: anarchy, anarchism, capitalism, State, freedom, direct action, mutual aid, eco-anarchism, queer anarchism, disability justice, resource-based society, squats, travellers, festivals, counterculture, climate crisis, solidarity, cooperation without rulers.
Author bio
Dicky Dread has lived an unusually double life: professor of physics by day, anarchist DJ and festival traveller by night. He has published widely in science, including standard textbooks on measurement, but his heart has always been in the fields, rigs and improvised homes of the UK's counterculture. His writing spans cultural histories of New Age Travellers, anarchist theory, cookbooks, guides to living off-grid, and raw accounts of trauma, survival and community.
Drawing from decades of experience building solar systems, repairing caravans and arguing politics around campfires, he writes with humour and defiance about freedom beyond the State, money and religion. He measures things precisely, he jokes, because so much of his own life could never be calibrated.
Practical Anarchy brings together those strands - academic rigour, lived experiments, festival basslines and stubborn hope - to map out how a freer, more cooperative world might be possible.
