Back in the late 1970s, when I was a young history major making my way through the University of Michigan, I somehow stumbled upon the Labadie Collection, which was then on the seventh floor of the Graduate Library. I took it to it quickly. Pretty soon I started showing up there regularly, taking a seat at one of the long wooden tables and reading books, pamphlets, poems, and powerful manifestos written by anarchists like Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Peter Kropotkin and, of course, Jo Labadie. Most of the works had been published around the turn of the 20th century. Many were as aesthetically exceptional—lovely paper, great colors, incredible artwork—as they were intellectually interesting.

My worldviews back then were still being formed, but in hindsight, I can see that the spiritual seeds in what I was reading most definitely took root. Anarchism, and the anarchists whose work I was studying, resonated with me. I could relate completely to the idea that when we lived mostly as others wanted us to, feeling compelled to conform in ways that didn’t feel right to us, that our lives and our work would end up being drab, boring, spiritually depressing, and, at worst, an outright disaster. And on the other hand, that when we lived in ways that were true to ourselves, respected others for who they really are, freely chose to contribute to our communities, tapped creative energy, honored human nature, and eliminated hierarchy, good things were likely to happen. I loved (and still love) Emma Goldman’s view that “Anarchism is the spirit of youth against outworn tradition.”

Fast forward to the fall of 2017 . . .

One of the best parts of working on the series of Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading books (Parts 1-4 are already out; 5 and 6 are outlined) over the last eight or nine years has been the rekindling of my early fascination with anarchist thinking. It’s not why I set out to write the books in the first place. But my increased interest in anarchism has been an inspiringly beautiful by-product, an accidental but amazing outcome, informing my understanding of the world and my beliefs about business, life, and love. What started in the Labadie Collection all those years ago has turned out to be quite a relationship—an alignment of already existing (even if previously unacknowledged) passions, and an enhancement of deep-seated but undeveloped beliefs that have made my work, my life, and my leadership significantly more rewarding and effective. I owe a lot to that library!

My Own Beliefs

Sixty-five years after Jo Labadie gave his books to the University of Michigan, I sat in the collection, some time in my sophomore year, looking through pamphlets and books by Labadie, Goldman, and so many of the other anarchists. It all resonated, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. After I graduated I got a job as a dishwasher in a local restaurant merely as a stopgap to pay my rent. It turned out to be a much longer stint than I imagined. Forty years later I still spend the vast majority of my time at one of the ten Zingerman’s businesses here in town.

Weinzweig with Curator Julia Herrada in the Labadie Collection

A few years into my work in restaurants, I moved into my first formal management position. As jobs went, this one was certainly reasonable. I met some great people and came to love the food business. That said, none of my bosses were giving much thought to the creation of an egalitarian workplace. I tried to put some pieces of what I’d read in the anarchist books into action—doing my best to be kind, model good behavior, and generally leave everyone to their own devices—in the well-intentioned if naïve belief that people would just do the right thing of their own volition. The seed of this almost-anarchist approach was inspiring, but the soil in which I was planting it wasn’t ready for what I was thinking. And I wasn’t a good enough gardener to get anything to grow from my efforts. In hindsight, mine was probably not the most productive approach, but I was young. If my school studies came up for one reason or another, I would generally smile and tell people that I was a “lapsed anarchist”—I still believed in the principles, but I no longer practiced them.

The writer David Whyte says, “A life can often be measured against how sure we were in responding to the initial beckoning image.” In that regard, I didn’t do all that well my first time through. The fates—or more likely my own intuition—had invited me into the world of the anarchists. I was fascinated. But after a quick dabble while at U-M, I’d left the party. Unable to figure out how anarchism could fit with my management job, I gradually let my attraction lapse. My friend Deborah Bayer asked me what I would say today to that younger me. The answer is, I suppose, “You’re a lot less lapsed than you think you are. There’s a good reason why you’re so intrigued. Stick to your guns. There’s spiritual gold at the end of that anarchist rainbow.”

By the late 1980s, the Deli had grown to include 60 or so staff members. It became clear that I needed to get more serious about my leadership studies. I began to read progressive business literature—folks such as Peter Drucker, Robert Greenleaf, Max De Pree, Peter Senge, and Ricardo Semler. I learned about Servant Leadership, setting clear expectations, open-book management, “leadership jazz,” and learning organizations. In the early 1990s, we wrote our mission statement, and then our vision for 2009. In 1994, we started ZingTrain, which got me teaching our approaches to leadership to other organizations. By the early 2000s, my work started to shift away from food writing (which I still love) and more and more towards business philosophy. I started to do more speaking at business gatherings as well, which in turn pushed me to learn and understand leadership at ever-deeper levels. Although corned beef on rye remained the cornerstone of what we did, over the years Zingerman’s became increasingly well known for our progressive approach to running a business.

One day in 2008, while I was working on Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 1, I was asked to speak at the Jewish Studies department at the University of Michigan. The talk was scheduled for the following fall and was given the title “Rye Bread and Anarchism,” a reference by department chair Deborah Dash Moore to my modern-day work with the former and my academic interest in the latter. Busy as usual, I didn’t think much about the topic at the time. But over the course of the summer, I realized that although I’d recently written an in-depth article on the history of Jewish rye bread, I hadn’t looked at anything to do with Emma Goldman in ages.

Not wanting to embarrass myself in front of the well-versed professors who I imagined would be in attendance, I dug out a stack of my old anarchist books and started to reread them. What I found blew me away. The classic headline of anarchist beliefs—getting rid of government—was strongly present in what I was reading, but that’s not what caught my attention. Instead, I stumbled onto a treasure trove of creative concepts that sounded surprisingly similar to the progressive business literature I’d been reading so much of over the years. And so many things that were integral to old anarchist thinking seemed to be embedded already in the way we were working at Zingerman’s. The ideas that the point of an organization is to enhance the lives of the people who are a part of it; that involving more people in managing the work they’re doing makes good sense; that there’s wisdom in everyone who works in an organization; that when men and women don’t believe in what they’re doing, they don’t do good work; that when people are treated like interchangeable machine parts, they aren’t inspired to get to greatness; that anyone can learn to lead; that the point of the organization is to serve those who are part of it.

Second Chances

David Whyte writes, “Our ability to follow our star is also a measure of our belief in the original invitation.” Sometimes when that initial invite arrives, we’re too uncertain, not together enough, to take the chance. That’s what happened to me; I let the original opportunity that was delivered to me lapse when I left the Labadie Collection behind and started working in restaurants. But for whatever reason of luck or life, we sometimes get a second shot. The talk at the Jewish studies department was mine. This time I took it.

This new round of anarchist studies had me intrigued. For me, high interest can often lead to near obsession. Once I start studying, I don’t ever want to stop. I get a buzz from reading good books. I pored over more material, gained more insight, read more, and more, and more. A couple hundred books later, I’m still studying today, still finding new insights. What once seemed sort of interesting but essentially irrelevant has now taken center stage. It’s all come together quite remarkably.

I love English writer Colin Ward’s image of the ideas of anarchism in society sitting silently like “seeds beneath the snow” waiting for an intellectual spring to arrive. My anarchist interests began to germinate. As Gustav Landauer posited long ago, “Revolution is always alive. . . . It stays alive underground, it creates a complex unity of memories, emotions, and desires.” I could probably now drop the “lapsed” part of my title—more and more, my belief system has come back to what I was unwittingly drawn to so strongly when I was a student. And to think, the whole thing started forty years ago, sitting at long wooden tables looking at obscure, but oh-so-powerful, books. As Peruvian anarchist Manuel Gonzalez Prada said a century ago: “A book can demolish fortresses the cannon cannot.”