Page Text: About
Welcome to Rebel Press
We are a small anarchist publishing collective based in Aotearoa / New Zealand. We’ve been working away busily since 2006 to meet the needs of producing anarchist and radical literature down here in this corner of the world. Our intention is to encourage the publication of quality anarchist material written in Aotearoa and the wider South Pacific, as well as republishing and making accessible anarchist writing from the world over.
We’re not your normal publisher. We work voluntarily, are non-profit, sell our books at cost, and cover every stage of the production process — from proofing, design, printing, binding and finishing — all in a humble office and with the aid of a few much loved machines.
Against Copyright
The 19th Century anarchist PJ Proudhon famously decreed “property is theft!” We struggle for the socialisation of all forms of productive property — including knowledge — and a world without exploitation and wage slavery. While we have little choice under capitalism but to recover costs involved in making books, we do our best to make the contents of these books freely available online as downloadable PDFs.
Everything published by Rebel Press is anti-copyright; we encourage you to read, print and distribute what you like!
What is Anarchism?
Anarchism begins from the central insight that social hierarchies are unnecessary and, therefore, oppressive. In place of the systemic violence of power, anarchism seeks instead to expand upon the combined ideals of freedom coupled with equality.
Against the centralisation and violence of the State, anarchism proposes the full decentralisation of the political and the economic, the destruction of national borders, and the horizontal organisation of life from the smallest to the largest, from the simplest to the most complex. Against wage slavery and poverty, anarchism seeks the full socialisation of property, shared and worked in common to directly meet the needs of people. And in rejecting hierarchies of identity — sexual, racial, ethnic, or otherwise — anarchism seeks an expansive and thoroughgoing egalitarianism.
Decentralisation, free association, and mutual aid — such are the key concepts of anarchism.
Publish with Rebel Press
Do you have a project you’d like to see published? We’re always looking for projects to take on, whether they’re at the very earliest planning stages or ready for their final proofing.
If it fits with our aims and we’re excited about it (it doesn’t have to be strictly anarchist), then we can help take it through to its final form. Just contact us.
Anarchy: Selected Writing
Anarchy: Selected Writing is to be a collection of some of the best (but perhaps not-so-well-known) anarchist texts produced recently, in the last 15 or so years. It is for those articles and chapters that you’ve read, that you’ve found inspiring and insightful, and that you wish others too could have the opportunity to read. It is for those gems of writing you’ve stumbled upon that you wish anarchists knew better.
Our intention is to make available these kinds of texts that are otherwise trapped in expensive books, rare zines, or hidden in the depths of the internet, and to collate them into a cheap paperback book.
Voices Against the Wind
A history of ethical vegetarianism and animal rights in Aotearoa
To refuse to eat meat or dairy products in a country where the economy relies heavily on the beef and dairy industries, and where the national dish is roast lamb, is to be a dissident and a rebel. To campaign for the rights of animals, is to go one step further. Voices Against the Wind seeks to tell the stories of vegetarians, anti-vivisectionists, and animal rights activists in Aotearoa from the time of the vegetarian tupuna Toi-Kai-Rakau of Te Tai Rawhiti up until the early twenty first century.
Drawing on both print and oral history sources, this project will acknowledge the hard work and courage of activists (many of them women) who have dedicated their lives to creating a more just world for all living beings. It will also show the linkages between political movements. Early vegetarians spoke out on a wide range of issues — from peace and labour rights to prison reform, and feminism. Many animal rights activists today are involved with a comparable range of issues. There are no boundaries to compassion, no limits to anger against injustice.
For more information, contact