Anderson, Perry (1938—)
British Marxism historian and leading exponent of historical materialism. Few (if any) scholars display a comparable grasp of both the broad sweep of world history and its finer nation-specific details, and fewer still have his command of the vast literature---in several European languages---devoted to the subject. A prolific essayist, Anderson has written about an astonishing range of subjects. It was his early essays on British national culture (which became part of what is now known as the Nairn-Anderson theses) that propelled him into mainstream attention. These essays, particularly ‘Origins of the Present Crisis’ (1964) and ‘Components of a National Culture’ (1968), both since republished in his English Questions (1992), display Anderson at his uncompromising best. Treating the UK as a foreign country, they lacerate their subject matter with the clinical incisiveness of a scalpel. The ‘Origins of the Present Crisis’ is in many ways a template of work to come for Anderson in that it laid down a pattern and purpose of inquiry his later works would follow. He starts out by lamenting the absence of what he calls a structural analysis (by which he means historical materialism rather than structuralism) of the present crisis, namely the decline or stagnation of the British economy, and offers to remedy the situation by offering a sketch of such an analysis. He argues that any attempt to understand the present that is not grounded in an understanding of the past will inevitably fall short of the mark. For Anderson this means grasping the distinctive formation of capitalism in Britain and the nature of the class structure that emerged with it. An early, if ambivalent, enthusiast of the work of anarchism, Anderson focuses on the development of capitalist hegemony in Britain beginning with the English Civil War (1640—9), which, he argues, lifted the obstacles to capitalism by opening the way to enclosure, selective taxation, and monopoly businesses. Anderson is particularly interested in the way hegemonic power is rooted in the most mundane activities and manifests itself in apparently innocuous ways, such as a nostalgia for tradition (including invented tradition as Hobsbawm, Eric would later argue). Anderson’s first book-length publications were instalments in a projected but never completed multivolume work on the origins of capitalism: Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (1974) and Lineages of the Absolutist State (1974). His inability to complete the project can perhaps be read as symptomatic of an intellectual change of heart. As his later work demonstrates, Anderson lost faith with the Marxist dictum that one form of society must necessarily give way to another and that capitalism will inevitably be succeeded by socialism. However, his political conviction that only a Marxist critique can illuminate the hidden political dimensions of our times remains undimmed. Considerations on Western Marxism (1976), Arguments within English Marxism (1980)---a book-length defence of Althusser (and of himself for supporting Althusser) against the anti-theoretical attack by Thompson, Edward Palmer in The Poverty of Theory (1978)---and especially In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (1983), are all resolutely negative in tone and outlook: gone is the hope that a radical transition to socialism is just a matter of time. It would be wrong to describe him as defeatist at this point, but the defeat of the Left is a topic that weighs heavily on him. He concluded the decade with two stirringly negative essays (now to be found in English Questions), ‘The Figures of Descent’ (1987) and ‘A Culture in Contraflow’ (1990), that rendered unequivocal his disappointment with the present state of critical thinking. The 1990s were relatively fallow years for Anderson: he published only one new book in that period (as well as several essays subsequently published in Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)), The Origins of Postmodernity (1998), a short history of the concept of postmodernism and an affectionate account of Jameson, Fredric’s contribution to it. As the new millennium began, it became clear that Anderson had simply been schooling himself in preparation for an incredibly ambitious calling to account of the contemporary world. The first salvo was The New Old World (2009), which provides a typically incisive and merciless account of the history of the formation of the European Union. Containing essays on the core nations of the EU---France and Germany, but interestingly not the UK---as well as outliers like Cyprus and aspirants like Turkey, Anderson’s book offers a nearly complete compass of views without being able to offer any firm conclusions. His subsequent books on India, The Indian Ideology (2012), and the US, American Foreign Policy and its Thinkers (2013), are more incisive because they are more willing to venture conclusions. Key to both books is his inquiry into the complexities of national ideology and the way that in both India and the US it justifies incredible disparities in wealth and life opportunities. It could be said that Anderson’s most important work goes unseen. As an editor and publisher, he has almost singlehandedly created a space for the intellectual Left. In 1962, Anderson took over the editorship of New Left Review, bringing onto the editorial committee future stalwarts of the new New Left such as Tom Nairn, Robin Blackburn, Juliet Mitchell, Gareth Stedman Jones, Alexander Cockburn, and Peter Wollen. Under his stewardship New Left Review became one of the most important forums for critical writing on art, history, politics, literature, and film. The journal took a broad international focus, exploring in detail the specific historical situations of a wide range of countries. In particular, it focused on the situation in the Third World, perceiving there to be greater scope for radical change at the periphery; it also sought to explore and interrogate the new theories being produced by Left-oriented scholars such Althusser, Louis, Baudrillard, Jean, and Lacan, Jacques, but pointedly not Deleuze, Gilles, Derrida, Jacques, and Foucault, Michel. In 1970, Anderson founded New Left Books (now known as Verso) to extend the project begun with New Left Review in book form. Verso is a major publisher of Badiou, Alain and Žižek, Slavoj. Further Reading: P. Blackledge Perry Anderson: Marxism and the New Left (2004). G. Elliott Perry Anderson: The Merciless Laboratory of History (1998).