Edited by David Goodway, AK Press.
Review by Robert Allan Williams in Impact Press #57-Summer 2005, p43.

This book commemorates the political achievements and ideas of the late British neurologist Christopher Agamemnon Pallis, who lived from December 1923 to March 2005 and wrote anarcho-socialist tracts under the pseudonym of Maurice Brinton in support of the British Solidarity Group. Gathered here are 43 of Brinton's essays. All socialists are not alike and Brinton was not only different, but a contrarian. Born in India to a bourgeois upper-middle class Greek-Anglo family and schooled in Francophile Switzerland, his family moved to Britain in 1940 during World War II; he graduated from Oxford University and eventually became a medical doctor. In the 1960s, he began to inquire deeply about the failures of Marxism in Communist countries such as the Soviet Union. News of mass slaughters conducted by Communist states stunned Marxists in Western countries. Much of Brinton's work critically examined the state of European socialism and questioned classical Marxist theories. Subsequently, he discovered the work of French theorist Cornelious Castorides (also known as Paul Cardan) and his humanistic "rejection of Marxism as a whole". This was a socialist theory without the hard edge of economic and historical analysis. Karl Marx, who lived and witnessed the 19th century British variation on the corporatist theme, wanted to make the world a better place; this sentiment was shared by Brinton. He reevaluated Marx's basic concepts and purged many of the ideas of Marxism's early proponents. His observations led him to question the gap between socialist rhetoric and the reality, calling Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first proclaimed anarchist of the 19th century, "muddleheaded". He rejected much of classical Marxism and attempted to develop an alternative reconstruction of class exploitation inspired by Marx that, in his opinion, was essential to the liberation of the oppressed. Brinton was critical of the Marxists' emphasis on materialism - on the collective dream of acquiring resources of the land for consumption. He lamented that "'Socialism' is equated with full bellies. The filling of these bellies is seen as the fundamental task of the socialist revolution". This is a book written for anarcho-socialists and other Marxists. Apart from a few non-leftist authoritarians, the index is filled mostly with the names of well-known Marxists ranging from Marx, Engels, and Lenin to Trotsky, Proudhon, and Castro. Goodway wrote in his introduction that Brinton was only comfortable with the label of "libertarian socialist". Yet Brinton himself cautioned that "in politics one should not accept people at their own self-assessment, but seek objectively to evaluate their ideas and actions".  For example, in his diary of the 1960 Belgian General Strike, Brinton witnessed the peoples' response to the problems created by government-generated crises and "the sympathy with strikers shown by innumerable small shopkeepers and cafe owners; the farmers supplying free vegetables..." and that "local government had broken down. Local initiative and self-reliance had replaced it". "In every country the main enemy of the people is their own ruling class", wrote Brinton. Although Brinton considered "Marxism inadequate, not only as a system of ideas capable of leading to libertarian revolutionary action, but also as a method", he believed in a Marxist-inspired view of class struggle. He remained faithfully wedded to the Marxist notion that the "path to freedom lies through the socialist revolution" achieved from those who, like him, "seek radically to transform society" and recognized that he would be "labelled 'anarcho-Marxist' by those who like ready-made tabs for their ideological wares".