The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism(Contemporary Anarchist Studies)

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The Impossible Community confronts a critical moment when social and ecological catastrophe loom, the Left seems unable to articulate a response, and the Right is monopolizing public debates. This book offers a reformulation of anarchist social and political theory to develop a communitarian anarchist solution. It argues that a free and just social order requires a radical transformation of the modes of domination exercised through social ideology and institutional structures. Communitarian anarchism unites a universalist concern for social and ecological justice while recognizing the integrity and individuality of the person. In fact, anarchist principles of mutual aid and voluntary cooperation can already be seen in various contexts, from the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina to social movements in India. This work offers both a theoretical framework and concrete case studies to show how contemporary anarchist practice continues a long tradition of successfully synthetizing personal and communal liberation. This significant contribution will appeal not only to students in anarchism and political theory, but also to activists and anyone interested in making the world a better place.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: In search of the impossible community 2. Critique of the Gotham Program: From libertarian socialism to communitarian anarchism 3. The third concept of liberty: Theorizing the free community 4. Against principalities and powers: Critique of domination versus liberalization of domination 5. Anarchy and the dialectic of utopia: The place of no place 6. The microecology of community: Toward a theory of grassroots organization 7. Bridging the unbridgeable chasm: Personal transformation and social action in anarchist practice 8. Disaster anarchism: Hurricane Katrina and the shock of recognition 9. The common good: Sarvodaya and the Gandhian legacy 10. Beyond the limits of the city: A communitarian anarchist critique of libertarian municipalism Bibliography Index

About the Author :
John P. Clark is Gregory F. Curtin Distinguished Professor in Humane Letters and the Professions as well as Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Environmental Studies faculty at Loyola University New Orleans, USA. He is the author of several books, including Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: The Radical Social Thought of Elisée Reclus (2004).

Review :
In this often insightful and illuminating book John P Clark sets out his vision for a radically democratic 'communitarian anarchism'...Clark's deep commitment to the anarchist ethics that he advocates, and his work in putting them into effect, lend weight to the distinction between ethics as working ideals and the kind of 'abstract moralism' he criticises...This book is valuable for several important reasons...Clark adeptly deploys Marx, Hegel, Aristotle, Enlightenment Philosophers, Zizek and a host of other modern and ancient thinkers, making this work erudite and rich. In The Impossible Community, John Clark proposes something that is sorely lacking in today's landscape: the prospect of going beyond our obsessions with catastrophe in all its guises (environmental, geopolitical, financial, etc.) to the exploration of new forms of social organization based on voluntary anarchist cooperation. John Clark is able to bring to bear his immense erudition and experience with alternative modes of social organization, both historical and geographical, and thus can lead us, like Ariane with her thread, out of the labyrinth of our present-day paralysis. At a time of growing social and ecological crisis, John Clark is a very welcome voice, bringing hope with his version of communitarian anarchism. He writes very vividly and persuasively, whether it be general theory or particular case studies. The Impossible Community should be widely discussed and realized since it shows brilliantly a way out of our present predicament. The Impossible Community is a magnificent book, distilled from a lifetime of radical practice. I know of no other work that so successfully integrates rigorous philosophical inquiry with on-the ground struggle. Generous and compassionate in spirit, fierce in critique, prodigious in learning, and universal in scope, this celebration of the anarchist way is a beacon of hope for our afflicted times. A text that is wide-ranging and challenging in the best sense of the word. It fuses passion, will, and reason. It combines deep theory with practical examples of social transformation. Where there is sustained complex analysis, it is not gratuitous, it is pertinent to the overall argument, demonstrating how anarchism’s account of social solidarity alongside a creative individualism is not Idealist, abstract, or contradictory. The intricate arguments are well illustrated by the latter, more descriptive and reflective chapter on the Katrina tragedy, and the sections on contemporary communal movements in the Indian sub-continent. As such, The Impossible Community makes a valuable contribution to those interested in the growing anarchistic social movements and how they link the local to the global.