Lay Down Your Arms

Edited by Ole Birk Laursen

Published by On Our Own Authority! Publishing, 2019

70 pages, paperback

Bringing together eight anarchist, communist, and socialist writers of the 1930s--Hendrik Jan Mispelblom Beyer, Magdeleine Paz, Saïl Mohamed, Lyonel Florant, Aron van Dam, Han Kuijsten, M. P. T. Acharya, and E. K. Nobushima--this book reproduces a November 1935 special issue of the Dutch anti-militarist journal, De Wapens Neder, collecting essays on anti-militarism, anti-imperialism, and anti-fascism during the period just after the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, at a time when Japanese aggression in Asia had been going on for a decade, and at the cusp of the Spanish Civil War. Including radical voices from India, Algeria, and Japan, the essays gathered here tie the rise of militarism and fascism to European, American, and Japanese imperialism. In doing so, they open a window onto the global networks of the radical left during this era and document an overlooked history of anti-colonial anarchism.

Praise for Lay Down Your Arms

"Ole Birk Laursen has recovered a unique 1935 issue of an anti-militarist magazine featuring--crucially-an international array of writers from India, Japan, Algeria as well as from Europe offering fresh angles that cut through the prevailing eurocentrism." -Tom Goyens, author of Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914

"This remarkable collection of writings [...] provides activists and scholars the much-needed opportunity to evaluate a period of anti-militarist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist struggle that holds a mirror to our own time. [...] The analysis points the way toward more effective movements against resurgent nationalism today." -David Struthers, author of The World in a City: Multiethnic Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles