In ordinary language, a ghost writer is someone who stands behind or writes on
behalf of a named author. In dubbing George Woodcock the ghost writer of anarchism
we instead want to suggest that Woodcock identifi ed anarchism’s ‘essence’ or,
as Stirner has it, ‘the spirit that walks in everything’.2 Aft er considering the evolution
of Anarchism in the context of Woodcock’s political activism we discuss Woodcock’s
contribution to the construction of the anarchist canon and his treatment of anarchism’s
‘essence’.
History
School
Social Sciences
Department
Politics and International Studies
Published in
Anarchist Studies
Volume
23
Issue
1
Pages
46 - 62
Citation
EVREN, S. and KINNA, R., 2015. George Woodcock: the ghostwriter of anarchism. Anarchist Studies, 23 (1), pp. 46 - 62.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/