Peter Linebaugh

Peter Linebaugh is a child of empire, schooled in London, Cattaraugus, N.Y., Washington D.C., Bonn, and Karachi. He went to Swarthmore College during the civil rights days. He has taught at Harvard University and Attica Penitentiary, at New York University and the Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. He used to edit Zerowork and was a member of the Midnight Notes Collective. He coauthored Albion’s Fatal Tree, and is the author of The London Hanged, The Many-Headed Hydra (with Marcus Rediker), The Magna Carta Manifesto, and introductions to a Verso book of Thomas Paine’s writing and PM’s new edition of E.P. Thompson’s William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. He works at the University of Toledo, Ohio. He lives in the Great Lakes region with a great crew, Michaela Brennan, his beautiful partner, and Riley, Kate, Alex, and Enzo.

• Book events
• Reviews
• More from Peter

Titles by Peter

Forewords by Peter

---

Praise

“There is not a more important historian living today. Period.”
—Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“E.P. Thompson, you may rest now. Linebaugh restores the dignity of the despised luddites with a poetic grace worthy of the master.”
—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

“Ideas can be beautiful too, and the ideas Peter Linebaugh provokes and maps in this history of liberty are dazzling reminders of what we have been and who we could be.”
—Rebecca Solnit, author of Storming the Gates of Paradise

---

Praise

“There is not a more important historian living today. Period.”
—Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“E.P. Thompson, you may rest now. Linebaugh restores the dignity of the despised luddites with a poetic grace worthy of the master… [A] commonist manifesto for the 21st century.”
—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

“Peter Linebaugh’s great act of historical imagination… takes the cliché of ‘globalization’ and makes it live. The local and the global are once again shown to be inseparable—as they are, at present, for the machine-breakers of the new world crisis.”
—T.J. Clark, author of Farewell to an Idea

---

Praise

“My benediction” —E.J. Hobsbawm, author of Primitive Rebels and Captain Swing

“E.P. Thompson, you may rest now. Linebaugh restores the dignity of the despised luddites with a poetic grace worthy of the master. By a stunning piece of re-casting we see them here not as rebels against the future but among the avant-garde of a planetary resistance movement against capitalist enclosures in the long struggle for a different future. Byron, Shelley, listen up! Peter Linebaugh’s Ned Ludd and Queen Mab does for ‘technology’ what his London Hanged did for ‘crime.’ Where was I that day in Bloomsbury when he delivered this commonist manifesto for the 21st century? The Retort Pamphet series is off to a brilliant start.” —Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums and Buda’s Wagon

---

Forewords By Peter

Praise

“Silvia Federici’s theoretical capacity to articulate the plurality that fuels the contemporary movement of women in struggle provides a true toolbox for building bridges between different features and different people.”
—Massimo De Angelis, professor of political economy, University of East London

“Silvia Federici’s work embodies an energy that urges us to rejuvenate struggles against all types of exploitation and, precisely for that reason, her work produces a common: a common sense of the dissidence that creates a community in struggle.”
—Maria Mies, coauthor of Ecofeminism

---

Praise

“Two impressive figures, William Morris as subject and E.P. Thompson as author, are conjoined in this immense biographical-historical-critical study, and both of them have gained in stature since the first edition of the book was published… The book that was ignored in 1955 has meanwhile become something of an underground classic—almost impossible to locate in second-hand bookstores, pored over in libraries, required reading for anyone interested in Morris and, increasingly, for anyone interested in one of the most important of contemporary British historians… Thompson has the distinguishing characteristic of a great historian: he has transformed the nature of the past, it will never look the same again; and whoever works in the area of his concerns in the future must come to terms with what Thompson has written. So too with his study of William Morris.”
—Peter Stansky, The New York Times Book Review

“An absorbing biographical study…  A glittering quarry of marvelous quotes from Morris and others, many taken from heretofore inaccessible or unpublished sources.”
—Walter Arnold, Saturday Review

“Thompson’s is the first biography to do justice to Morris’s political thought and so assemble the man whole… It is not only the standard biography of Morris; it makes us realize, as no other writer has done, how completely admirable a man this Victorian was—how consistent and honest to himself and others, how incapable of cruelty or jargon and, above all, how free.”
—Robert Hughes, Time Magazine

---

Book Events

---

Reviews

• Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program: A Review in Contemporary Sociology
• From the Foreword to E.P. Thompson’s “William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary”
• On John Clark’s The Impossible Community
• The Blast— A review on Counterpunch
• Hooray, Hooray, the First of May
• William Morris on Rain Taxi
• Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: A Review
• “Stop, Thief!” – Peter Linebaugh’s New Collection of Essays
• The Struggle For The Commons
• Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance in Antipode

---

Interviews

• The Commons and Communism— Peter Linebaugh on Against the Grain
• Peter Linebaugh & Avi Lewis on The Laura Flanders Show
• Peter Linebaugh on Democracy Now! talking about The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day
• Peter Linebaugh Talks May Day
• Peter Linebaugh interview on MR online
• Peter Linebaugh interviewed by Independent Left
• Primitive Accumulation Closing Talk —Peter Linebaugh
• A Juneteenth Message for the American Interior With Peter Linebaugh, Michaela Brennan…
• Peter Linebaugh discussing The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day
• 19th Century Luddites and Capitalism’s Effect on the Industrial Revolution

---

Mentions

• The Theft of the Commons
• We Are All Luddites: Ned Ludd & Queen Mab in CounterPunch
• “Disruptive technologies”: Lessons from Wapping

---

Blog

• Excerpt: The City and the Commons: A Story for Our Time
• Peter Linebaugh’s “Great Act of Historical Imagination”*
• On John Clark’s The Impossible Community
• May Day and Abolition
• The Blast— A review on Counterpunch
• On John Clark’s The Impossible Community
• Peter Linebaugh’s overview of the historical roots of the traditional workers’ day
• Peter Linebaugh Talks May Day
• Peter Linebaugh interview on MR online
• Peter Linebaugh interviewed by Independent Left