Literature Orders

By remaining true to our mission, the A.J. Muste Foundation is offering books and our pamphlets for free with the only expense being shipping costs. Below you will find descriptions of the literature available. Please enter the quantity of each item you’d like and pay the shipping fee. 

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Books

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Preface by Jo Ann O. Robinson, Published 2002. 515 pages.

The Institute has released a new edition of The Essays of A.J. Muste, first published in 1967. The twenty-eight essays in this nearly 600-page volume are presented as written during the many decades of A.J. Muste’s activism. “Sketches for an Autobiography” eloquently describes his life as a radical pacifist, political organizer, minister and pragmatic philosopher. There are entertaining and historically important accounts of his work with other civil rights, antiwar, and labor leaders and of his international travels to promote peace. The essays paint a clear picture of how Mr. Muste and the pacifist left became the “glue” that held so many, often disparate, factions together during many era’s of progressive organizing in the United States. His political analyses make an excellent foundation for both studying and building effective movements for peace and social justice.

On the current edition:

“Muste did not write to be studied in the abstract. The Essays call to the conscience of each reader to engage in ‘responsible living . . . being engaged in the struggle against injustice and tyranny’ as he expressed in his ‘Sketches for an Autobiography.’ When Muste died, the notice read: ‘in lieu of flowers, friends are requested to get out and work-for peace, human rights, for a better world.’ This reissue of his Essays is a fitting way to renew that request.” – Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson, from her Preface

On the first edition:

“A.J. Muste stands out in our time, and I believe that he will stand out in history, as a great leader of a pacifism which is anything but passive. He is a man who believes that real victories for peace and social justice must, and can, be won by nonviolent means. This book . . . vividly illustrates the change and growth in thought of a man whose steadfastness of purpose and dedication to his fellow men were constant.” – Norman Thomas

“Historians of the future who want to know what it meant to live with integrity in the twentieth-century era of wars and revolutions will very likely begin with the life of A.J. Muste. He has confronted the violence which threatens to destroy us with the whole of his life. I am one of the many who has learned from him the virtues of grace under pressure, and how to bring to bear wit and compassion simultaneously.” – Staughton Lynd

end The Essays of A.J. Muste (Edited by Nat Hentoff)

Introduction by Larry Gara Published 1982, 269 pages
The Story of A.J. Muste by Nat Hentoff. An activist writer chronicles the ‘grandfather’ of the current U.S. peace movement-minister, labor activist, pacifist and resister, who left us with a legacy of nonviolent direct action. This edition contains many photographs and an introduction by Larry Gara, a leading historian of the nonviolent movement.

end Peace Agitator (By Nat Hentoff)

Cornerstones of Nonviolence, The AJ Muste Institute Pamphlet Series

The Institute publishes a pamphlet series comprised of historical and contemporary essays on issues of social change. Covering, among other topics, nonviolent resistance and national defense, liberation struggles, racism, sexism, and labor organizing, they place 19th century thinkers next to present day activists. They demonstrate that the threads linking radical pacifist philosophy through the ages are strong and durable. These pamphlets are distributed to activist groups, schools and colleges, and individuals for classes, discussion groups and public events.
“Loving Your Enemies”; “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”; “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam”
“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’” (from “Loving Your Enemies”)

end Martin Luther King, Jr. – America’s leading apostle of human dignity.

“La Fuerza de Amar”;”Carta desde la Carcel de Birmingham”; y Declaración de Independencia de la Guerra en Vietnam
Tres Ensayos por Martin Luther King, Jr.-“Amad a Vuestros Enemigos”, un sermón que fue pronunciado por King en la iglesia bautista de la avenida Dexter en Montgomery, Alabama, en la Navidad de 1957, después de haber estado encarcelado por haber cometido actos de desobediencia civil no-violenta durante una campaña que denunciaba la segregación racial en los autobuses de Montgomery; “Carta desde la Cárcel de Birmingham”, escrito por King cuando estaba otra vez encarcelado por manifestarse en contra de la segregación racial, esta vez en Birmingham, Alabama; y “Declaración de Independencia de la Guerra en Vietnam”, el famoso discurso anti-guerra, pronunciado por King en la iglesia de Riverside, en Nueva York, un año antes de su asesinato.

end Martin Luther King, Jr. (Spanish Translation)

“On Revolution and Equilibrium”
“This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern. It is precisely solicitude for his person in combination with a stubborn interference with his actions that can give us a very special degree of control (precisely in our acting both with love, if you will—in the sense that we respect his human rights—and truthfulness, in the sense that we act out fully our objections to his violating our rights). We put upon him two pressures—the pressure of our defiance of him and the pressure of our respect for his life—and it happens that in combination these two pressures are uniquely effective.”

end Barbara Deming – The feminist connection to nonviolence.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
“I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.”

end Henry David Thoreau -The original architect of resistance.

Pacifism and Invasion; On Duelling
“It always irritates me to have people use the adjective `innocent,’ only as applied to women and children! But we have our part in it too: the responsibility of cheering “our boys,” of selling “liberty bonds” as in the Great War, of buying them, of making speeches, of pride in those who “bravely enlist,” poor young lads, of contempt for those who hold back.” (from “On Duelling”)

Section Bend Jessie Wallace Hughan – Suffragist, peace activist, founder of the War Resisters League.reak

Preparedness: The Road to Universal Slaughter; The Individual, Society and the State
“The very proclaimers of ‘America first’ have long before this betrayed the fundamental principles of real Americansim, of the kind of Americanism that Jefferson had in mind when he said that the best government is that which governs least; the kind of America that David Thoreau worked for when he proclaimed that the best government is the one that doesn’t govern at all; or the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country.” (from “Preparedness: the Road to Universal Slaughter”)

end Emma Goldman – Fiery orator, anarchist, agitator for peace and liberation.

Prison Letters
“The other day one of these lorries was drawn by a team of buffaloes instead of horses. I had never seen the creatures close at hand before. … They are black, and have huge, soft eyes. The buffaloes are war trophies from Rumania. The soldier-drivers said that it was very difficult to catch these animals, which had always run wild, and still more difficult to break them in to harness. … Unsparingly exploited, yoked to heavy loads, they are soon worked to death. The other day a lorry came laden with sacks, so overladen indeed that the buffaloes were unable to drag it across the threshold of the gate. The soldier-driver, a brute of a fellow, belabored the poor beasts so savagely with the butt end of his whip that the wardress at the gate, indignant at the sight, asked him if he had no compassion for animals. “No more than anyone has compassion for us men,” he answered with an evil smile, and redoubled his blows. … The one that was bleeding had an expression on its black face and in its soft black eyes like that of a weeping child—one that has been severely thrashed and does not know why, nor how to escape from the torment of ill-treatment. … The suffering of a dearly loved brother could hardly have moved me more profoundly than I was moved by my impotence in face of this mute agony. … Poor wretch, I am as powerless, as dumb, as yourself; I am at one with you in my pain, my weakness, and my longing.”

end Rosa Luxemburg – Courageous leader of Germany’s democratic socialist movement

Who Has the Spiritual Atom Bomb?
“It is said that if the United States were to stop shooting and withdraw its troops from Vietnam, the Viet Cong would then stage a great purge of the people who we have been seeking to protect—have pledged to protect. First of all, so far they have been getting precious little protection from us. The Vietnamese people as human individuals have been shot at by the French, by us, by Communists, by guerrillas for years. Maybe, if only somebody would stop shooting at them that would be something to the good.”

End A. J. Muste – Foremost Twentieth Century pacifist theoretician and activist, minister, socialist.

The Morality of Scientific Technology; The Psychology of Being Powerless
“To expect disaster and desert the sinking ship is not a political act, but it is often a profoundly creative one, both personally and socially. To do it, one must have vitality of one’s own that is not entirely structured and warped by the suicidal system. Going it alone may allow for new development.”

end Paul Goodman – Pacifist, anarchist, activist.

Six articles spanning three decades on the state of the U.S. labor movement.
“The mere assertion that this [the 1880s] was a decade of great industrial growth does not accurately picture the turmoil and unevenness of this development, the heartache and tribulations of the millions of immigrants and native workers who sought security in the factories and railroads being built by the ‘robber barons.’”

end Sidney Lens – Peace and labor activist, socialist, occasional political candidate.

“Two Votes Against War” and Other Writings on Peace.
“In the geography class, we learned as children how to bound the country in which we live. By the map we were taught to orientate ourselves nationally. To most of us those boundary lines and coast lines still represent the limits of our country, and we feel that we have no concern with what lies beyond them. At any rate, we rested in that illusion until the bitter awakening which recently overtook us. It seems now that we must forthwith go to school again and learn about boundaries in a wholly different kind of way, namely, that they do not represent the end of the good citizen’s responsibility but also a beginning. Boundaries are contacts as well as limits. At what point do the interests of our country meet and possibly conflict with those of other countries? What are our real interests anyway and are they worth a war for their protection? And are the interests in question those of the nation as a whole or merely those of a small group of men or even of a single man? Are such clashes anyway settled better by heat and conflict or by a reasonable adjustment?”

—Jeannette Rankin, “Peace and the Disarmament Conference” (In “Two Votes Against War” and Other Writings on Peace)

end Jeannette Rankin – First woman in Congress, suffragist, pacifist.

“A Philosophy of Nonviolence”
“Death is a given. Our own life is supremely important to us – our only experience of consciousness – yet we must come to terms with its inevitable end. At least for those of us who are atheists, there is no afterlife. Part of what makes nonviolence so powerful is its respect for the unique nature of every person. Not one of us has existed before, or will exist again. Each of us contains a kind of “private universe” of experience. It is good to live, good to experience life, good to enjoy that experience, good to rejoice in the wonders of life. All the more urgent, if we are here but once, and briefly, to feel entitled to experience the delights.” – David McReynolds, A Philosophy of Nonviolence

end David McReynolds – Longtime anti-war activist, War Resisters League staffer and Socialist Party presidential candidate.

Including Juanita Nelson, Allen Ginsberg, and Pete Seeger.

“When the doors opened, I continued to sit. My thoughts were like buckshot, so scattered they didn’t hit anything or, when they did, made little dent. The robe was a huge question mark placed starkly after some vexing problems.

“Why am I going to jail? Why am I going to jail in a bathrobe? What does it matter in the scheme of things whether or not you put on your clothes? Are you not making, at best, a futile gesture, at worst, flinging yourself against something which does not exist? Is freedom more important than justice? Of what does freedom of the human spirit consist, that quality on which I place so much stress?”

end Some Writings on War Tax Resistance – Thoughts, poems, tales from resisters.

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