Description

Consisting of 10 collaborative picture-essays that weave poetic words with intricate yet bold images, this collection aims to challenge readers into thinking of community action in a positive light. Depicting what it would be like to live, every day, in a world created from below, where coercion and hierarchy are largely vestiges of the past, Paths Toward Utopia suggests some of the practices that prefigure the self-organization that would be commonplace in an egalitarian society. This stirring book ultimately mines what people do in their daily lives for the already-existent gems of a freer future—premised on anarchistic ethics like cooperation and direct democracy.

About the Author

Cindy Milstein is the author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations and has contributed essays to the anthologies Globalize Liberation and Realizing the Impossible. She is a board member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies. She lives in San Francisco. Josh MacPhee is an activist, an artist, and the author of Celebrate People’s History! and Signal. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Erik Ruin is a printmaker, shadow-puppeteer, and a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative. He lives in Philadelphia.

Praise For…

"These picture-essay-poems break the existing world both in what they say and how they say it. A fabulous book."  —John Holloway, author, Crack Capitalism

"Combines beautiful art, crafted insights, and exemplary stories to plant inspiring seeds of a better future. What more could one ask for?"  —Michael Albert, author, Parecon: Life after Capitalism

"This remarkable book is inspiring and emboldening, allowing us to see the contours of another world that is not only possible but already in formation."  —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author, Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975

"This fine collection of graphic essays indicts a contemporary failure of imagination, and restores utopian politics that does not surrender to the drumbeat of everyday emergencies, tasks, and defeats."  —Andrej Grubacic, author, Wobblies and Zapatistas