Anarchism

Guerin is a prolific writer whose '30's work on fascism is something of a Marxist classic. This emphatically pro-anarchist essay fails to define key polemical terms like "the state": it lacks the informality, and philosophical sensitivity of first-rate French political writing. Noam Chomsky's introduction echoes the view of anarchism as a "libertarian" brand of socialism. Guerin's thematic presentation of nineteenth-century anarchist theory expounds and abundantly excerpts from Proudhon and Bakunin, with ancillary reference to Kropotkin, Stirner, et al. The section on "practice" portrays the Bolsheviks as evil dictators and the Russian anarchists as unsung heroes of 1917, glances at the Italian left of Gramsci's day, and deals richly deserved blows to Stalinist policy in the Spanish Civil War without pursuing the significance of the Spanish anarchists' vacillation between anti-political purity and political opportunism. Guerin concludes with a call for unadulterated postrevolutionary workers' control, quite indifferent to the question of how or why to make a revolution. The habit of "forcing history" which Sartre noted in Guerin's work is here, but not enough of the "enriching" quality, especially with respect to the social roots of anarchism. Yet the subject has enough intrinsic and topical importance to draw a political-intellectual audience. (Kirkus Reviews)