Emile Pataud and Emile Pouget: How We Shall Bring about the Revolution: Syndicalism and the Co-operative Commonwealth (1909; second edition with preface by Peter Kropotkin 1911; original title Comment nous ferons la Révolution)

‘Semi-fictionalized account of the revolutionary process.’ (Dan Clore)

Algernon Pentworth: The Little Wicket Gate (1913).

? (Dan Clore)

Fredy Perlman: Manual for Revolutionary Leaders (1972, as Michael Velli, a pseudonym meant to recall Machiavelli)

‘In the guise of presenting revolutionary leaders with advice on how to gain power, this book presents a number of scenarios in semi-fictional form showing how to prevent authoritarians from taking power in a revolutionary situation. One section, The Seizure of State Power, has been reprinted separately. Recommended.’ (Dan Clore)

Marge Piercy: Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)

Concerns a woman who is confined in a mental hospital whose only escape is into the future, to what Lessa, Takver and Alyx, in Open Road, call ‘the future-anarchist village’ of Matapoisett. Piercy herself doesn’t use the term ‘anarchist’, although there is indeed no government: the closest thing to it are the township and regional planning councils, which are chosen by lot.

   Enthusiastically reviewed in Anarchist Feminist Magazine in 1985.

Edgar Allan Poe

In his writing, but not in his politics, Poe was much influenced by William Godwin. Godwin actually lived long enough for one of his late works (Lives of the Necromancers) to be reviewed by Poe in the Southern Literary Messenger (December 1835). Poe was appreciated by the individualist E. Armand, who instigated the publication of a French translation of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), and of a collection of his tales, at the turn of the 20^th century.

Frederik Pohl: The Years of the City (1980)

New York in the 21^st century.

Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1952), Gladiator-at-Law 1955

One of the best-known of 1940s sf novels, the cynical dystopia of The Space Merchants is a strong attack on advertising and consumerism; for the advertising company boss, Power ennobles. Absolute power ennobles absolutely (c. 4). For M. Eagle 'There can be few more biting (or amusing) satires of capitalism-gone-wild'; and Vittorio Curtoni also found it 'a most enjoyable novel which dismantles and overturns [the] mechanisms of cosmic imperialism.' (25)Gladiator-at-Law features big-business intrigue, in which a house-production monopoly is overthrown by a motley crew of the dispossessed. Pilgrim found it notable, and unusual in that the insurrection is successful. (Pilgrim 1963: 371)

Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr, eds: The Survival of Freedom (1981)

Graham Purchase: My Journey with Aristotle to the Anarchist Utopia (1994)

Yet another sleeper awakes, this time to be given a guided tour of Bear City in the Cat-River bioregion, an eco-anarchist utopia. (Dan Clore)

   Worthy and rather laboured, but mercifully short.