Anderson’s main preoccupation was with the possibility – or otherwise – of achieving socialism. At first, Anderson contended that socialism was not only possible and desirable but inevitable, that those who supported capitalism, be they conservatives or social-democratic ‘meliorists’, were stupidly fighting the force of history, that these groups would inevitably become agents of fascism and that intellectuals had a responsibility to educate the working class and to take whatever steps were necessary (even if these be over the dead bodies of their opponents) to overcome the ancien régime. Over time, Anderson became increasingly disillusioned: firstly with ‘actual socialism’ in the Soviet Union, then with Trotsky’s argument that the Communist Party’s ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ could be a temporary arrangement, with the Marxist philosophical framework underpinning socialist practice and, finally, with the Australian working class he had tried to politicise. In some ways, the most moving passage of the book comes from a 1946 letter that Anderson wrote in reply to an old Trotskyist comrade:

[Y]ou will see that I am not in sympathy with your aims and that my line is what you would call ‘collaborationaist’. If you wan’t [sic] to make any comment on what I have said, I’ll read it of course, but I won’t promise to reply. I still look back with appreciation to the discussions of the Crown St. days, but it is no longer 1932.

The few letters lift what can otherwise be unstimulating reading. Anderson was enormously learned, and his formulations were original and arresting. Regardless of the view being advanced, it was delivered strongly and often accompanied by an entertaining onslaught against whoever had said something ignorant or ‘incorrect’. But Anderson spent a considerable amount of time attacking such things as the Hegelian concept and Marxist deployment of the dialectic, while many of the specific geo-political ‘crises’ to which he responded (those related to the Cold War, for example) have lost much of their urgency.

The more world-weary Anderson stands before the foot-lights as an avowed opponent of the idea of socialism and of any programme of change that might either strengthen the power of the state or lead to a reduction of the numerous groups competing against each other in the formal and informal processes of politics. Having embraced more orthodox versions of his philosophical empiricism and political plural-ism, and grown increasingly concerned about the size and intrusiveness of the welfare state, Anderson ignored any structural problems of capitalism, at times completely contradicting his earlier analyses.

During his career, Anderson observed the last gasps of intellectual high modernism. He took his professorship just ten years after the Russian Revolution, and soldiered on into the postmodern era. It is therefore to be expected that his theories and views would develop and change. His philosophy, which remained more stable and informs much of his social commentary, was specialised, technical and based on a reading of classical, Anglo-American and continental philosophical traditions with which few could claim a full familiarity. His work was, moreover, highly original and idiosyncratic. In spite of his political backflips, it cannot be said that he was weak-minded, intellectually derivative or simply contrarian. He was always critical of elements of Marxist thought (especially the dialectic), while even after his break from the workers’ movement he energetically opposed Robert Menzies’ attempt to ban the Communist Party of Australia. The final essay here is a defence of Marx, or rather, an attack on the straw Karl Marx erected by an author of an anti-Marxist text.

This leads to the second, more interesting question: that of Anderson’s ongoing legacy. Andersonianism is probably most commonly associated today with the political right. Yet this collection emphasises his earlier radicalism and reveals the complexity of his views. The bulk of the material comes from the period before 1940 during which Anderson was either an active supporter of the working-class movement or in broad sympathy with it. While emphasising the need for social freedom, this is primarily a freedom for group, rather than individual, activity. He rejects as oxymoronic the notion of ‘relative truth’ and sees the role of the philosopher as a truth-teller and active contributor to society (this may partly explain both his confident espousal of opposed political positions and the style of various controversial public figures influenced by him: Germaine Greer, for example). A Perilous and Fighting Life enables a deeper understanding of Anderson’s spirited interrogation of society. While this legacy is contested, Anderson’s political writings will remain of interest.