Radical Archives

Updated 22 January 2026

The Radical Archives is a place dedicated to the accurate preservation of radical content, i.e., left-wing political material largely associated with communism, socialism, and anarchism. The term radical archives has not always been employed to describe the same activity, and I am making no claim to settle this wider debate. Instead, I want to explain the intention of this particular collection of works.

As stated in the first sentence, the radical aspect of this archive refers to the fact that we preserve political content frequently labeled as radical. Radicalism often accompanies three other terms (liberal, conservative, and reactionary), associated with the work of Friedrich Rohmer in 1844, and refers to the extreme left of the political spectrum. (Rohmer. "The Four Parties.") Radicals believe in changing society at the root, in dismantling the current concentrations of power—economic, political, and social—and reconstituting society into one in which power is distributed maximally, to all sapient beings. Our vision of the future is one in which we recognize that natural wealth, unevenly distributed across the planet, ought to be managed by the people who require it to live and work, and share it with those in other localities. We refer to this future society as either communism, socialism, or anarchy, though the specific functioning of this society is as varied as the radicals themselves.

Content is preserved, if possible, in text-only format to maximize accessibility. Text can be converted to e-book formats for additional formatting, or to audio via screen readers.