Demanding the impossible : a history of anarchism : be realistic! Demand the impossible!

841 Pages·2010·32.1 MB·English

by  Marshall

THE
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PETER MARSHALL
Demanding the Impossible
A History ofAnarchism
BeRealistic:DemandtheImpossible!
For Dylan and Emily
DemandingTheImpossible:AHistoryOfAnarchism
PeterMarshall
ISBN:978-1-60486-064-1
LibraryOfCongressControlNumber:2009901374
Copyright©PeterMarshall1992,1993,2008
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PETER MARSHALL is a philosopher, historian, biographer and travel
writer. He has written fifteen highly acclaimed books which are being
translated into fourteen different languages. They include William
Godwin, Nature's Web, Riding the Wind, The Philosopher's Stone and
Europe's Lost Civilization. His circumIJ.avigation of Africa was made
into a TV series. His website is www.petermarshall.net
From the reviews of Demanding the Impossible:
'Large, labyrinthine, tentative: for me these are all adjectives of praise
when applied to works of history, and Demanding the Impossible meets
all of them.' GEORGE WOODCOCK, Independent
'I trust that Marshall's survey of the whole heart-warming, head
challenging subject will have a large circulation ... It is a handbook
of real history, which should make it more valuable in the long run
than all the mighty textbooks on market economics and such-like
ephemeral topics.' MICHAEL FOOT, Evening Standard
'Infectious in its enthusiasm, attractive to read ... There is more infor
mation about anarchism in this than in any other single volume.'
NICOLAS W ALTER, London Review (~f Books
'Immense in its scope and meticulous in its detail ... It covers every
conceivable strand in the libertarian little black book.'
AR THUR N ESLEN, City Limits
'A wide-ranging and warm-hearted survey of anarchist ideas and
movements ... that avoids the touchy sectarianism that often weakens
the anarchist position.' lAMES lOLL, Times Literary Supplement
'There's no mistaking the fact that Demanding the Impossible is timely
... a gigantic mural in which every celebrated figure who has ever felt
hemmed in by law and government finds a place.'
KENNETH MINOGUE, Sunday Telegraph
'Peter Marshall, clearly a convinced impossibilist, has set himself a
sisyphean task. His book is a kind of model of what it talks about - a
sphere of near-structureless co-existence, a commune or "phalanstery"
for all the friends of libertarianism from Wat Tyler to Walt Whitman
to Tristan Tzara.' LORNA SAGE, Independent on Sunday
'Peter Marshall's massive but very readable survey ... deserves a wide
readership.' ANTHONY ARBLASTER, Tribune
'The most compendious, most studied and most enlightening read of
anarchist history.' ANDREW DOBSON, Anarchist Studies
'Excellent ... a lively and heartening study.'
RONALD SHEEHAN, The Irish Press
'Reading about anarchism is stimulating, funny and sad. What more
can you ask of a book?' ISABEL COLEGATE, The Times
'Interest in anarchy ... was reawakened by the publication of Peter
Marshall's massively comprehensive Demanding the Impossible.'
PETER BEAUMONT, Observer
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
William Godwin
Journey through Tanzania
Into Cuba
Cuba Libre: Breaking the Chains?
William Blake: Visionary Anarchist
Journey through Maldives
Nature's Web: An Exploration ofE cological Thinking
AroundAfrica: From the Pillars ofH ercules to the Strait ofG ibraltar
Celtic Gold: A Voyage around Ireland
Riding the Wind: A New Philosophy fiJr a New Era
The Philosopher's Stone: A Quest for the Secrets ofA lchemy
World Astrology: The Astrologer's Quest to Understand
the Human Character
Europe's Lost Civilization: Uncovering the Mysteries oft he Megaliths
The Theatre oft he World: Alchemy, Astrology and Magic in
Renaissance Prague
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction IX
PART ONE: Anarchism in Theory
1 The River of Anarchy 3
2 Society and the State 12
3 Freedom and Equality
PART Two: Forerunners of Anarchism
4 Taoism and Buddhism 53
5 The Greeks 66
6 Christianity 74
7 The Middle Ages 86
8 The English Revolution 96
9 The French Renaissance and Enlightenment 108
10 The British Enlightenment 129
PART THREE: Great Libertarians
I I French Libertarians
12 German Libertarians
13 British Libertarians
14 American Libertarians
PART FOUR: Classic Anarchist Thinkers
15 William Godwin: The Lover of Order 191
16 Max Stirner: The Conscious Egoist 220
17 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: The Philosopher of
Poverty 234
18 Michael Bakunin: The Fanatic of Freedom 263
19 Peter Kropotkin: The Revolutionary Evolutionist 309
20 Elisee Reclus: The Geographer of Liberty 339
21 Errico Malatesta: The Electrician of Revolution 345
22 Leo Tolstoy: The Count of Peace 362
23 American Individualists and Communists 384
24 Emma Goldman: The Most Dangerous 'Woman 396
25 German Communists 410
26 Mohandas Gandhi: The Gentle Revolutionary 422
PART FIVE: Anarchism in Action
27 France
28 Italy
29 Spain
30 Russia and the Ukraine
31 Northern Europe
32 United States
33 Latin America
34 Asia
PART SIX: Modern Anarchism
35 The New Left and the Counter-culture 539
36 The New Right and Anarcho-capitalism 559
37 Modern Libertarians 566
38 Modern Anarchists 587
39 Murray Bookchin and the Ecology of Freedom 602
PART SEVEN: The Legacy ojA narchism
40 Ends and Means
41 The Relevance of Anarchism
EPILOGUE
Reftrence Notes 707
Select Bibliography 759
Index 795
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Heiner Becker,John C1ark,John Crump, Caroline
Cahm, David Goodway, Carl Levy, Geoffrey Ostergaard, Hans Ramaer,
and Vernon Richards for commenting on different chapters of this work.
Tom Cahill and Graham Kelsey kindly provided me with materials. I am
indebted to John Burrow for encouraging, many years ago, my interest
in the history of anarchist ideas. I much appreciate the pioneering work
in the history of anarchism undertaken by Paul Avrich, Daniel Guerin,
JamesJolI,Jean Maitron, Max Nettlau and George Woodcock, although
I do not always share their emphases or interpretations. In preparing the
book for publication, the editorial advice of Philip Gwyn Jones has
proved unfailingly perceptive and relevant.
My thanks are due to the staff of both the National Library of Wales
and the British Library, and to the librarians of Coleg Harlech, the
University College of North Wales, and the University of London for
facilitating my research.
My children Dylan and Emily have been bemused by my work on
something impossibly called 'anarchism', but have been an inspiring
example of constructive anarchy in action. I am grateful to my mother
Vera for first awakening in me a sense of justice and equality. My brother
Michael has given his warm support at all times. Above all, I must thank
Jenny Zobel for her constant help and encouragement during the com
position of this long study; only she knows the depth of my indebtedness.
My friends Richard Feesey, Jeremy Gane, Graham Hancock, David
Lea, and John Schlapobersky have in their different ways all inspired me
to complete my task.
For this new edition, I have added an epilogue bringing anarchism
up to date in the twenty-first century and given my own suggestions on
the way forward.
I would like to thank John Clark in particular for his very perceptive
and detailed comments. Ruth Kinna helped me with some materials.
Elizabeth Ashton Hill kindly read the epilogue. My thanks also to
Rosalind Porter and Essie Cousins at Harper Perennial and Ramsey
Kanaan at PM Press who have brought out this new edition.
I welcome any readers' comments on my website:
www.petermarshall.net
PETER MARSHALL, Little Oaks, July 2007

INTRODUCTION
ANARCHY IS TERROR, the creed of bomb-throwing desperadoes wishing
to pull down civilization. Anarchy is chaos, when law and order coUapse
and the destructive passions of man run riot. Anarchy is nihilism, the
abandonment of aU moral values and the twilight of reason. This is the
spectre of anarchy that haunts the judge's bench and the government cabi
net. In the popular imagination, in our everyday language, anarchy is associ
ated with destruction and disobedience but also with relaxation and
freedom. The anarchist finds good company, it seems, with the vandal,
iconoclast, savage, brute, ruffian, hornet, viper, ogre, ghoul, wild beast,
fiend, harpy and siren.' He has been immortalized for posterity in Joseph
Conrad's novel The Secret Agent (1907) as a fanatic intent on bringing down
governments and civilized society.
Not surprisingly, anarchism has had a bad press. It is usual to dismiss
its ideal of pure liberty at best as utopian, at worst, as a dangerous chimera.
Anarchists are dismissed as subversive madmen, inflexible extremists,
dangerous terrorists on the one hand, or as naive dreamers and gende saints
on the other. President Theodore Roosevelt declared at the end of the
nineteenth century: 'Anarchism is a crime against the whole human race
and aU mankind should band against anarchists.
'2
In fact, only a tiny minority of anarchists have practised terror as a
revolutionary strategy, and then chiefly in the I 890S when there was a spate
of spectacular bombings and political assassinations during a period of
complete despair. Although often associated with violence, historically
anarchism has been far less violent than other political creeds, and appears
as a feeble youth pushed out of the way by the marching hordes of fascists
and authoritarian communists. It has no monopoly on violence, and com
pared to nationalists, populists, and monarchists has been comparatively
peaceful. Moreover, a tradition which encompasses such thoughtful and
peaceable men as Godwin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Tolstoy can hardly
be dismissed as inherendy terroristic and nihiIistic. Of the classic anarchist
thinkers, only Bakunin celebrated the poetry of destruction in his early
work, and that because like many thinkers and artists he felt it was first
necessary to destroy the old in order to create the new.
The dominant language and culture in a society tend to reflect the