To the Impatient
Description
A welcome collection from a firebrand of the immigrant anarchist movement in the United States.
To the Impatient presents the first English-language collection of Johann Most's writing from 1882 to 1906. This volume is composed of newly translated texts that chart his evolving views on revolution, anarchist philosophy, religion, labor, violence, love, democracy, and American society. More propagandist than theorist, Most possessed a rare gift for rousing the working class through language. His mastery of German, whether in speech or print, distinguished him among early immigrant radicals in America. With sharp wit and rhetorical flair, he wielded words to clarify complex ideas, ridicule the powerful, and incite action, creating a verbal spectacle that was as daring as it was unforgettable. Included are his most famous pamphlets The Beast of Property and The God Pestilence alongside articles exploring the breadth of his anarchist ideas of the time.
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Johann Most (1846-1906) was a German writer and orator. After advocating for social democracy starting in the 1860s, Most converted to anarchism by the early 1880s and emigrated to the United States in 1882. Through his paper Freiheit he advocated for armed struggle against capital and the state. After the Haymarket Affair in 1886, Most's thinking broadened as he explored the culture, labor movement, and politics of his adopted homeland and deepened his thoughts on anarchist communism and philosophy.
Tom Goyens is a Professor of History at Salisbury University in Maryland, USA. He is the author of Johann Most: Life of a Radical (2025) and Beer and Revolution (2007), both from the University of Illinois Press. He is editor of Storm in My Heart (2015) and Radical Gotham (2017). His articles on anarchist history have appeared in Social Anarchism, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, and The Journal for the Study of Radicalism. He is also an editorial board member of the journal Anarchist Studies.