[2] Historian Paul Avrich described it as "a classic" and wrote that it was "the clearest exposition of communist anarchism in English or any other language".

In an effort to revive the movement, the Jewish Anarchist Federation in New York City asked Berkman in 1926 to write an introduction to anarchism intended for the public.

After Berkman's death in 1936, a second edition using the original title was reissued in August 1937 by Freie Arbeiter Stimme with a preface by Emma Goldman.

[8] In May 1942, during World War II, Freedom Press in London published the first British edition, using the name ABC of Anarchism, opting on grounds of expense to leave out the first of the three sections of the original work, titled "Now", consisting of 18 chapters dealing primarily with the ills of contemporary capitalist society, criticism of socialist parties and of the Russian Revolution.

A number of the ideas he discusses are similar to those proposed in The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin, whom Berkman cites throughout.

It is the common failing of most works dealing with social questions that they are written on the assumption that the reader is already familiar to a considerable extent with the subject, which is generally not the case at all.