The Doctors of Revolution: 19th-Century Thinkers Who Changed the World

Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Study of the Period
Review: At 1200 pgs, this book is very long and I do not pretend to have read it all. Nontheless, you don't have to read it all to enjoy it. Chapters are self emcosed books in themselves that encapsulate the history and thought of a particualr period. The book analyses the development of refolutionary political thinking in the 19th century up to the Russian Revolution. nationalists, Socialists and Anarchists represent only a fraction of the study. There are single chapters devoted to Marx and Bakunin (my favorite) as well as other major and minor contemporary thinkers. It's certainly an excellent reference work. I don't reccomend it, however, for light night time reading.

Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Study of the Period
Review: At 1200 pgs, this book is very long and I do not pretend to have read it all. Nontheless, you don't have to read it all to enjoy it. Chapters are self emcosed books in themselves that encapsulate the history and thought of a particualr period. The book analyses the development of refolutionary political thinking in the 19th century up to the Russian Revolution. nationalists, Socialists and Anarchists represent only a fraction of the study. There are single chapters devoted to Marx and Bakunin (my favorite) as well as other major and minor contemporary thinkers. It's certainly an excellent reference work. I don't reccomend it, however, for light night time reading.

Rating:
Summary: A conspiracy of equals
Review: The author opens the preface quoting a figure of the era of Gorbachev, "Only an idiot can really believe in Marxism". From the perspective of the current 'end of history' thermidor and neo-liberal endgame, one might as well think that idiots proved themselves incapable of creating from the heroic tale told here anything but an ism called Marxism. One might also conclude that contemporary modern man lacks the intelligence to create a just society, thus the confusion in the attempted correction. Judge lest ye be not judged This inauspicious preface complete, perhaps the tone gives the work tang, this fascinating book embarks on a stunning technicolor late late show rendition of one of the great epic tales of history, via a biographical account of the principals in the 'conspiracy of equals' spilling out of the era of Babeuf into the broils and disillusion of 1848, a Hollywood movie in prose. As if told from viewpoint of the poet Heine bearing witness to the drama, and like a zoom shot for the comparable 'Fire in the Minds of Men', this epic telling reveals the human side of each of the major figures, as if this might solidify some verdict. Instead, whatever the author's intention, the work is seditious by indirection by recalling the memory of this rushing series of cataclysm that overtook the twentieth century.
A very long book, and not particularly focused on the greater tide of political history, this compelling tome lingers like a kind of daguerrotype of these extraordinary figures, and the future they fought for, even as their efforts came to nothing in the wake of the swift reaction after the year of the Communist Manifesto.

Rating:
Summary: Biography alone does not make a good history
Review: Though "The Doctors of Revolution" is a demanding 1200 pages, its inclusiveness does not compare to what it lacks. The book essentially is a compendium of 19th century radical biographies dealing primarily with Heine, Marx and Bakunin along with other lesser radical lights. The biographies are readable and bring out the all to human sides of some of seemingly superhuman figures of the century. The history of a thought or of the times however cannot be told simply by detailing the lives of its great men.

Though plenty in personal details serious analysis is painfully lacking, especially for such an encyclopedic book! Page after page is spent detailing the early career and upbringing of Babeuf but only a few paragraphs thrown in between discuss his ideas; from whom and when did they ultimately originate? Who did they later inspire? What positive content was found in them? For Babeuf and later thinkers this is rarely answered satisfactorily. Though nearly a third of the book is spent on Heine, it remains unclear after reading as to why he became such a radical in the first place, or how he influenced later social theorists. For oh so many pages one is left with so little as to the growth, and change, in radical thought.

This goes on and on. In all around two hundred pages are spent discussing Jewish culture and the pressure to integrate into "Christian society" (perhaps because of the author's Israeli origin?), but it is entirely unclear as to what, if anything, this had to do with socialism other than by creating early tensions in the life of Marx or Heine. A chapter entitled "Marx and the Influence of Hegel" says almost nothing on its subject and is instead filled with how Marx was as a student in Berlin. This is quite a disappointment as what could be more interesting than how Hegel's conservative thought could be adopted by all of the most radical thinkers of the time.

The analysis that Barer does give is rather poor at that; it is clear that he is no revolutionary himself. Bakunin and Marx are described in one part as "Ruthless Doctrinaires" who are "bent on system building" above any concern for the people they claimed to be able to liberate with their ideas (though there is more sympathy toward Heine and Hesse.) Barer follows the traditional flaws liberal analysis, as it is clear by an elementary reading of Marx or Bakunin of how much humanism was contained in the thoughts of both. Barer rightly points out and emphasizes the authoritarian strands in early 19th century socialist thought, but his analysis stops here, as almost no credit is given to the positive elements of early socialist thought; the emphasis on changing economic realities to truly heighten the state of man.

Almost slanderous is the treatment of Bakunin, Barer seems almost unable of writing more than two paragraphs without deriding Bakunin as a "megalomaniac" or an "anarchist conspirator," and shows with this of course a near complete ignorance for what he really said and promoted. Like E.H. Carr and earlier Marxist Polemicists he promotes the idea that Bakunin believed in an "invisible dictatorship," a sort of elite Jesuit order of anarchists that would hold control after the revolution. One need only to read what Bakunin said to dispel these claims and see the true libertarian nature of his thought.

I give this book three stars because despite its shortcomings it has a wealth of interesting information on European history, from intellectual culture in Paris in the 1830's to the repression and censorship in Russia and to his credit Barer is no apologist for the autocratic regimes of the period. Interesting also is the idea presented that the Napoleonic invasion of Germany had much to do with setting the stage for future radicalism by dispensing with the feudalism of the time. Perhaps if the text was a quarter of its size I could say there would be more of a reason to read it.