Anarchism

For many people, anarchism is nothing more than a recipe for violence and disorder yet analohists themselves believe that their ideas are peaceful and constructive. To make sense of this and other paradoxes, David Miller has surveyed the whole range of anarchist thought and practice, and produced the first general critical study of anarchism as an ideology.

Part of the book lucidly expounds the central ideas of anarchism, with particular reference to the anarchist critique of authority and the state. This is followed by a detailed consideration of individualist and communist anarchism, and of the contrasts between them.

In Part II Dr Miller looks at the ways in which anarchists have attempted to translate their ideas into an effective revolutionary movement. He explains why anarchists reject the Marxist belief in a revolutionary party, and then examines the strategies that anarchists have advocated in its place: mass insurrection, individual violence, militant trade unionism. A chapter on the New Left considers the problems facing anarchists in the late twentieth.

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Finally the book offers an overall assessment of anarchism, giving detailed attention to its constructive achievements, including experimental communities and the Spanish collectives. The idea of a stateless social order may present insuperable difficulties, but there is still much to be learnt from the anarchist experience both about the abuses of power and about the problems and possibilities of free social relations