About book Demanding The Impossible: A History Of Anarchism (2007)
This is a fairly substantial and worthy account of the history of anarchism, largely built around review chapters of prominent figures and historical reviews of anarchism in action. It takes a broad view by including writers and thinkers who might better or equally be considered liberal or libertarian, although Marshall is always at pains to show their differences from classical anarchist thought.It has to be said that it can be a little dull at times and there is a lack of a sustained overview, something that would give us a better idea of what it all may mean. It was also written in or around 1991/2 so the 'action' (such as it is) takes place at one of the low points in anarchist history - a quarter of a century after the collapse of the student hopes of the 1960s.Similarly, Marshall is writing at least a decade and probably more before the internet permits the creation of a new politically-directed hacker activism and the emergence of the post-2008 insurrectionism that, one suspects, would have thoroughly confused the somewhat earnest intellectuals who dominate his book.Indeed, that is the problem with the tale told here. This is mostly a story of intellectuals pontificating from on high about ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ and about the nature of humanity and the world in a way that bears little relationship to the actual lived-in world of the people they claim that they want to liberate. And it gets worse over time. The culmination of the book is a deathly dull (I skimmed in the end) account of the thoughts of that dodgy old Hegelian Murray Bookchin, a throw-back to the nineteenth century if ever there was one.Marshall is old-school. The succession of (mostly) dead and nearly-dead white males leaves one, ultimately, less minded to anarchism at the end than one was at the beginning, partly because of the brutal realization that, if most of these gentlemen could have achieved their utopian dreams, the rest of us would have been oppressed and miserable before very long, certainly from utter boredom in their craftsman/peasant, neighbourly, crushingly dull, little communities.At the end of the day, most of these thinkers (as opposed to the far more interesting practical seizures of power by anarchists in the Latin street) have no real language for accepting humanity as it is and so they rapidly go scuttling into a world of claimed reason where you can read petit-bourgeois tyranny on every page, at least when the people do not match up to the dreams of their saviours.The Green Anarchism of Murray Bookchin is typical. His is a turgid and unrealistic Hegelianism that has very little to do with real freedom, calling us back to what amounts to the faith-based politics of dreamers like Kropotkin and Tolstoy via that German theoretician. Anything that is ultimately faith-based or essentialist is definitely a bit creepy to anyone with their two feet placed firmly on the earth and many anarchists can be lumped with the Marxists and New Age loons in that respect.In the end, one is thrown back to a place somewhere between the minimal state libertarianism and a humane left-libertarianism that permits some state action to enable all to be autonomous on equal terms. Grand theory has little to say to us here, praxis everything.But even the praxis leaves us with a romantic bad taste in the mouth because every decent anarchist experiment – the Paris Commune, the Kronstadt rebellion, Makhno in the Ukraine, the POUM in Catalonia, the Evenements of ‘68 and many others – is quite simply crushed by superior reality. Not just by superior force but by the fact that the force represents something – the reality of the situation. As a romantic, I am definitely with all these rebellions but, let's face it, participation is heroic but futile, an act of suicide. It would be like Mishima's hari-kiri only for the goodies.It is not enough to say that these experiments ‘should have won’ because they were ‘right’. The truth is they did not win for very good reasons related to what we are as human beings. The only successful anarchist rebellion would be one that could change humanity – and that is very dangerous territory indeed, a repetition by force of what the Bolsheviks tried and failed to do.All in all, this book, which is highly sympathetic to the movement, tells us that anarchic thinking is like a chair that is very appealing to the eye but falls apart when someone tries to sit on it. If it did not exist, it would have to be invented but only as a constraint or restraint on power, by promising rebellion if lines were crossed but not as an option for any social organization that is actually viable.This has implications for the four main current strands of quasi-anarchic thinking in the world today – hacker activism, greenery (which has already compromised with reality to gain a power that it probably does not deserve), the Occupy Movement and anarcho-capitalist libertarianism.All of these are troublesome for the prevailing order but none of them represent a terminal threat – indeed, the Occupy Movement’s achievement may have been little more than mobilizing the vote for Tweedledum Obama over Tweedledee Romney and giving the State some populist welly when it is minded to bring the capitalists to heel for its own tax-raising purposes. It is interesting that the State did not even bother to do that.Occupy is particularly daft from a classical anarchist perspective. It is led by naïve middle class students and activists whose sole purpose seems to be to get more cash into the hands of the State from the private sector or give the NGOs a bit more oomph in the street so that money can then be diverted to their latest pet project. The general public, of course, has seen through this. The most threatening to the State may be hacker activism and then only because its more louche side is quite prepared to act as intellectual muscle for organized crime. But it can just as easily be co-opted into the State Department’s manipulative cyberwars against states it does not approve of and it is most effective as trail-blazer for anarcho-capitalism’s darker side. Kim Dotcom is an anarchist of sorts but not quite what Prince Pyotr Kropotkin had in mind.Even in Greece today, where one would most expect insurrection, the struggle for mastery over a corrupt and failed bourgeois elite, backed by the European Union, is in the hands either of sensible Leftists who have no intention of unraveling the State and a bunch of gangster fascists. In Catalonia, the drive for independence is also no longer associated with anarchist ideology but with a revived Leftism.Worse, this Euro-Leftism is not only not anarchist in the traditional sense but is imbued with an ideology of identity politics that wholly relies on the State to impose its cultural agenda on an increasingly resentful mass (at least that proportion of the mass not on the State pay roll, admittedly a decreasing proportion). Having said all that, if we winnow out perhaps seven out of ten of the anarcho-intellectuals as either faith-based essentialists (and we include the Hegelians) or narcissistic imposers of their values and personality on the world, we are left with some good people and good thinking. The American Paul Goodman stood out in this respect. And it was good to see Foucault briefly included as gad fly.There is real value in anarchism but not as praxis or ideology. Its value lies in it being a reminder of the core value to humanity of personal autonomy and of individuation. People of anarchist bent would do much better to hold their noses and engage with the political process and the State through improved organization, if only to halt the growing power of authoritarian Leftists, fascists and religious believers. Camus' concept of rebellion as preferable to revolution holds water here - we can all constantly rebel against the unwarranted demands and claims of others.The final pages of the book raise issues with anarchism as practical politics but by this time we have all made our mind up – either we are anarchists or we are not. I am not – more so after reading the book than before. My initial sympathies dissipated chapter by chapter as I realized that I would be filled with a terminal boredom by these men and their utopias.Anarchists are too often people who have lost their sense of reality, equally as much as the religious types they claim to despise. In some cases (horror of horrors!), they will even claim to have found a better God or reality as did Tolstoy. Any politics that has a place for invented beings and universal consciousnesses must be considered dangerous and yet a small minority of anarchists persist in this sort of flummery. Like Marxism, anarchism can be religion by other means and so deeply dangerous to non-believers in the long run. Nevertheless, this book is strongly recommended as a sound guide to what anarchists have thought in the past and what they did in history.
This is the definitive history of Anarchism as a cultural movement, sociopolitical phenomenon and lastly, a fairly coherent political philosophy with its own analyses, solutions, trends and debates within its own framework. Peter Marshall delivers a very impressive book, both in depth and scope. In it, one can find pieces from a lucid array of thinkers that range from Taoism to contemporary right wing libertarianism, as well as lessons in history and some political and ethical theory to complement all of the above. There are interesting discussions on the ideas of prominent figures from Rousseau to Kropotkin and from Josiah Warren to Bertrand Russell, along with a fair share of criticism on most of them. Anarchosyndicalist, collectivist and libertarian experiments are also discussed in an interesting manner, which pinpoints their evident strengths as well as their weaknesses. While it's more useful as a reference book, it can be read at once but one should bear in mind that there's some repetition and I can understand if the reader occasionally looses interest. It's so complete which can lead to ignoring parts of it. For example, I found the chapter on anarchist movements in Asia quite uninteresting but this was a result of my own idiosyncracy. However, one can't blame the author for completeness and this was a monumental task for anyone to achieve. I found Peter Marshall's effort the most praiseworthy of all.
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Clear, detailed and thorough history of anarchism. Marshall does a great job connecting anarchy to its philosophical forerunners. From the philosophical connections to Taoism (in the Tao Te Ching), Buddhism, the Greeks, Christianity, the Middle Ages, the English Revolution, the French Renaissance and Enlightenment and the British Enlightenment.Marshall also provides detailed accounts of the major anarchist thinkers in the movement and provides information on how their work affected the society and the movement. From Godwin, the first to express anarchist ideals, without using the title (interestingly enough, he was married to the first feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft) to Gandhi, who was profoundly influenced by Tolstoy's Christian variety of anarchism. Thoroughly details anarchism in action. I'll mention the Spanish anarchist revolution because it was a pivotal moment in modern history for society at large and anarchism. Makes reference to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, which is a harrowing account of Orwell's first hand experience with the civil war and anarchist movement. You can really learn when the powers that be don't like something, Stalinists, Fascists and the West all agreed that the anarchist revolution had to be crushed and that's what happened. It's sad because the anarchist revolution was based on 50 years of organizing, planning and community building (which our current society lacks) and was crushed by huge imperialist powers. However there are still some remnants of anarchism in Spain today, such as the thriving worker co-operative, Mondragon.Details how in Russia and Ukraine the anarchists were crushed by Lenin and how the anarchists really DID want to "give all the power to the Soviets" unlike the authoritarian communists.Details anarchism in Latin America. The movement is mostly limited in scope due to the huge amount of colonial repression faced in the continent, Marshall (and I) believe that Latin America is ripe for the voice of anarchism to be heard. This is made evident by the modern day World Social Forum which is an annual meeting of civil society organizations, held in Brazil, which offers a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future through the championing of counter-hegemonic globalization (paraphrased from Wikipedia).A great book with plenty of good references and sources. As stated in the introduction "anarchism is like a river with many currents and eddies, constantly changing and being refreshed by new surges but always moving towards the wide ocean of freedom" Marshall did an excellent job demonstrating just that.I'll end with my favourite definitions of anarchism: Unlike Marxism or democratic capitalism which are institutional theories, the rejection of authority is an attitude not a program. Once adopted it patterns the kind of solutions we are disposed to accept (People without Government - Harold Barclay).Anarchism is a tendency in human development that seeks to identify structures of hierarchy, domination, authority and others that constrain human development. Then it seeks to subject authority to a very reasonable challenge, justify your legitimacy. Maybe in some special circumstances or conceivably in principle and if you can't meet that challenge (which is the usual case) the structures should be dismantled. Not just dismantled, but reconstructed from below (From one of Chomsky's lectures on anarchism).These definitions are limited, but usually provoke interesting conversation.I wouldn't recommend this book as a starting point to learn about anarchism. It requires some foreknowledge of anarchism such as the themes and people within them. I'd recommend Nicolas Walter's About Anarchism, it takes a clear and persuasive approach to explaining anarchism. Once you've learned a bit, check this book out.
—Brandon Love
Woah! All this time studying has actually allowed me to think like a 17th century thinker (Well at least the ones that were published!). Freaky. I have so many parallels with the modern (like 17th century) critics of 'government' and society'. And that's not to say I have any answers or my truth is more poignant than anyone else s but it certainly does address the big problems that still plague society. And you know what, a nice blend of anarchism and libertarianism would actually fix climate change, as its a symptom of our current governance and trade. Described simply here "the state is invariably controlled by the rich and powerful and that its legislation is inevitably made in the interests of the dominant elite. Godwin saw, like Marx, that the rich are always 'directly or indirectly the legislators of the state' and that government perpetuated the economic inequality in society. (Quote from the book)Heres another good one " it doesn't matter who you vote for the government still gets it" LOLYep Im right at the beginning of a very large book. In a way, let me guess in today's society the easiest and most peaceful way to achieve the anarchist vision would be to stop paid employment, stop using government benefits, create solidarity through a collective of like minded individuals in the form of mutual reciprocity (eg sharing) and discover mechanisms for housing and accommodation that did not involve purchasing land. Becoming self reliant, community minded and living without violence of any type. Anyone else, sir (in the way of "poor me punkers bent on smashing up stuff", or "complainants that suck of the nipple of the social welfare state and do nothing to change their position"), is an idiot.
—Marie
Peter Marshall's Demanding the Impossible is a wonderful expose of anarchism. Marshall painstakingly examines the major figures and their biographies, the history of anarchism, and the core ideas that underly this '-ism.' "Anarchism" is an awfully scary word but the basic principle is a suspicion of centralized government. You can compare it to what is sometimes called "libertarianism." Libertarianism advocates that we should have the most minimal government possible. Anarchism goes a step further and says we should not have government at all. The core concern of the view survives, though, wherever people are suspicious of authority and is against any position which assumes that authority is self-justifying; rather, if someone or some institution is in a position of power, they had better be able to give some reason for occupying that position. So the core concern goes. Anyway, this was one of the more interesting and engaging works of ideas I've read.
—Billie Pritchett
