New Book | Spirus Gay: L’acrobate anarchiste

Sylvain Wagnon | Paris: Les Éditions du Monde Libertaire, 2025.

From the Publisher:

Who knows, or has even just heard of, Joseph Jean Auguste Gay (1865–1938), also known as Spirus Gay?

Very few could answer that question.

And that’s perfectly normal. He’s one of the countless invisible figures of the anarchist movement who remain in the shadows of the headline names—Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Durruti, Makhno…

And yet, he lies at the very heart of the spirit of social anarchism—always has, always will.

What’s more, his approach to life, activism, and social revolution is, today in 2025, astonishingly modern and relevant. Yes, you read that right: astonishing.

Acrobat, anarcho-syndicalist, naturist, pamphleteer, atheist, anticlericalist, free thinker, Freemason, ecologist, educator, pedagogue, antiracist, antisexist, friend of animals and all living things… he understood that revolt, hope, and a political, economic, and social alternative only make sense when conceived globally, without dividing lines between primary and secondary struggles. And that saying so, to be credible, had to go hand in hand with doing so. Right away, here and now.

This book by Sylvain Wagnon tells that whole story—his life as one of anarchism’s invisibles of the past, perhaps because it prefigured what anarchism today could and should be.

As our comrades at Éditions libertaires like to say: “Before the past, tip your hat; before the future, roll up your sleeves!”

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Les Éditions du Monde Libertaire, 2025

156p.

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