Louis Patsouras
Black Rose Books
ISBN 1-55164-184-4
£17.99
I had hoped that this book would, as the title suggested, be an in-depth account and analysis of Grave's ideas. Sadly, the book's title is misleading. It should be called "The life and influence of Jean Grave." Instead of Grave being allowed to speak for himself, we get summaries of his major works. Rather than spend time discussing his ideas, we get chapters on what the author thinks is related subjects. Some of these, like Camus and May 68, are relevant to anarchism, others, like Sartre, are not (indeed, the author unconvincingly tries to suggest the latter was an anarchist!). Yet this has little to do with the anarchism of Jean Grave, the ostensible purpose of the book and why people may want to but it!
Then there are the factual errors. It is claimed that the "Bakuninists" wanted "immediate revolutionary action by small and clandestine groups," so ignoring Bakunin's stress on revolutionary unionism. Bakunin himself apparently saw revolution as the product of "a small, secret and highly disciplined organisation to create the necessary conditions through propaganda by deed -- terroristic acts, like bombings and assassinations." Nothing could be further from the truth. Little wonder the error, as the author references Aileen Kelly's infamously biased book on Bakunin. Similarly, we are informed that the Baader-Meinhoff gang were "anarchists" in spite of their self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninism.
The editors at Black Rose should have picked up on these and similar errors. Equally, they should have noticed the confused nature of the "2002 Post-script" which talks about the "New Left" of the 1960s as if it exists and is relevant today, not to mention the total lack of clarity of the suggestions for social change. Is the author really suggesting anarchists should support socialist parties as a means of creating anarchism? I'm not sure, as the whole argument is opaque.
One thing is sure, the book, much against its desire, shows the limitations of Grave's anti-organisationalist principles and his relevance today. Grave was consistently against organisation, limiting the impact of his work, more or less, to commentary on other people's struggles. Faced with the fact that his position condemned his activity to irrelevance in the class struggle he supported, he became sympathetic to syndicalism and, just before the First World War, actually joined the newly created national communist-anarchist federation. After the war, the organisational strand in French Anarchism strengthened considerably and Grave was left on the margins of the movement. Patsouras fails to address this development, instead asserting that "anarchism in France was finished as a viable movement after the advent of the Bolshevik revolution." As David Berry's "A History of the French Anarchist Movement" shows, this was not the case. The increased emphasis on organisation reaped rewards in the general strikes of 1936 when anarchism became, once again, a key player in the French labour and anti-fascist movements.
Is this book worth buying? No, unless you want a very basic introduction to the life of Jean Grave and are willing to put up with less than relevant chapters on such as "examples of the anarchist temperament"! Black Rose's quality control seems to have taken a nose-dive of late. Hopefully, it will get its act together and start producing books anarchists not only want to read, but gain something from.