Demanding the Impossible

To: Retort
From: PM

[Peter Marshall sends us this news of a new edition of his doorstopper of a conspectus of libertarian thought. IB]
 
Peter writes: 

Here is a brief description of Demanding the Impossible to send out to Retort:
 
'Navigating the broad river of anarchy from Taoism to the Situationists, from Ranters to Punk rockers, from individualists to communists, from anarcho-syndicalists to anarcha-feminists, Demanding the Impossible is an authoritative and lively study of a widely misunderstood subject. It explores the key anarchist concepts of freedom and equality, authority and power, society and the state, and investigates the successes and failures of the anarchist movement throughout the world. It covers not only the classic anarchist thinkers, such as Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus and Goldman, but also other libertarian figures, such as Nietzsche, Camus, Gandhi, Foucault and Chomsky. No other book on anarchism covers so much so incisively and so eloquently.
 
In this updated version, a new epilogue examines the most recent developments in theory and practice, including  'post-anarchism' and 'anarcho-primitivism' as well as the anarchist contribution to the peace, green and Global Justice movements.'
 
'Massive, scholarly, genuinely internationalist and highly enjoyable'  David Widgery, Observer
 
'An exhaustive and authoritative study which is bound to become the standard account',  John Gray, The Times
 
'Indispensable',  Richard Boston, Guardian
 
ISBN 9780006862451     Cover price  14.99 GBP   Harper Perennial, London    Paperback 818 pages
 
 
Many thanks also for that "Dispatch from London" which I thoroughly enjoyed. In the early seventies I lived in Putney and Barnes, walked along the bank of the Thames past the Harrod's temple to unused possessions, studied Godwin, quaffed Youngs and knew the brewery well in Wandsworth. I liked to see the strong horses, with feathers on their fetlocks, delivering barrels on carts to the pubs: slow delivery for slow supping. I was also aware of the Putney debates and knew the church where they took place. Putney once offered real beer and real revolution, and each no doubt inspiring the other.
 
Godwin, although known for his personal sobriety, once observed that the English pub is the working man's university - or at least it was until it became filled with Thatcherite values, fruit machines and television screens. Still, there's a good pub down my way still selling a variety of real ales in Tavistock on the west side of Dartmoor where I can lament with my friends the coming of the keg metal barrel and the dissipation of the sixties' drive for universal liberation and love. Or not quite, for the lovely vision lives on in the resurgent world-wide anarchist and libertarian movement in this new millennium! And the Putney debaters, the Levellers, the Diggers and the Ranters have not been forgotten...

All best,
Peter