Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism

Although the pioneering work of anarchist history was Woodcock's relatively tiny volume "Anarchism", Marshall demonstrates with this revision that the torch has passed from Woodcock to him. What is most satisfying in this edition is that, although Marshall's sympathies are unambiguously anarchist, he manages to offer a very balanced, clear, objective, helpful historical account, combined with admirably critical insights. Written in 1991, it has an added value for being reasonably recent, as previous scholarship on the subject is by now mostly dated. "Demanding the Impossible" is superior also because of its sheer bulk: 700+ information-packed pages. Not merely confining himself to looking at anarchism as an ideology, Marshall spans a period starting from Buddhism and Taoism, to ancient Greece and Christianity, up to the present and offers a rich and powerful exposition of these cultural phenomena and the ways in which they prefigure anarchistic ideas, to form a many-streamed "river of anarchy". In addition, there are explorations of modern anarchism in action in Russia and the Ukraine, Asia, Northern Europe and the United States, among many other countries across the globe. Other chapters include surveys and critiques of the major classical anarchist thinkers -- Mikhail Bakunin, Count Leo Tolstoy, Max Stirner, William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Prince Kropotkin -- as well as examinations of libertarian movements and thinkers allied to anarchism, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, Nietzsche, J.S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, the existentialists Sartre and Camus, The New Left, the hippy Counterculture, Right Libertarianism, the work of Michel Foucault, and so forth. Extremely accessible account overall.

This book was absolutely excellent. Complete in almost every way, it covered every major anarchist thinker, almost every anarchist stream of thought, and anarchist history by nation. The book was very objective, unbiased and *extremely* comprehensive, and as such i feel that it is essential reading for any anarchist or student of anarchism.