The Philosophy of a Schism

When Anarchism meets Critical Marxism: Paths and Paradoxes of “Socialisme ou Barbarie” (and of Trotskyism)

Benoît Challand

1. Introduction

This paper deals with the intersections between anarchism and a specific strand of Marxism, namely Trotskyism in the middle of last century in France. It presents a brief overview of the trajectory of Socialisme ou Barbarie (S ou B) under the influence of political theorist/economist/psychoanalyst Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). It also deals with previous work done on what were then unexplored archives of a small Trotskyite party in Switzerland (Ligue Marxiste Revolutionnaire) in the period 19691980, combined with oral history conducted with about thirty (former) militants. The paper would like to interweave some of the lessons from both cases (adding at times few elements from the general history of the Fourth International) to come up with broader (possibly contemporary) conclusions about the limits of black and red intersecting and analyze prospects for a return of possible red-black synergies.

The main contribution of Socialisme ou Barbarisme (the name of the group’s journal) at its inception was its slightly altered Trotskyite critique of the USSR as a form of state bureaucratic capitalism. It later developed its own critical voice against traditional Marxism for its ideological stiffness in its reading of advanced capitalist and bureaucratic societies. This unorthodox anti-authoritarian Marxist critique (sustaining at times a view close to council communism) developed by the journal exercised a deep influence on the French intellectual scene but also on the various social movements active around and after May 1968 in France. The influence of Castoriadis as a political theorist has boomed over the last years, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, hinting at a lasting influence of the ideas of S ou B.

The hypothesis of this paper is that ideas and people that gathered around the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie represent a good platform for thinking about the entanglement and convergence of Marxism and anarchism — but also their limits. Thinkers such as Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort (1924-...), and to a lesser extent Jean-Fran9ois Lyotard (1924–1998) have to a large extent merged ideals and suggestions taken from both traditions of thoughts. This paper historically re-assess their contribution as well as the aporias and paradoxes that they have left us. Let us go back to the period of foundation of this small political group.

2. Trotskyism cuts both ways: Lessons from the period 1945 to now

The reigning atmosphere in the immediate post-WW2 was pitch-dark: the Cold War in the making quickly erased the entente between Western countries and the Soviet Union and from 1947 onwards many predicted the outbreak of the Third World War. Doomsday visions were even more possible since the Soviet Union quickly acquired nuclear armament in 1949. In this context Trotskyite critique towards the Soviet Union, as in the early 1930s when it rightly stigmatized Stalin’s false approach towards fascism and Nazism as the ultimate stage of imperialism, regained prominence as people, in this difficult context of the late 1940s, had to take a radical stance towards the Soviet Union: either support ‘progressive’ forces in the name of Marxism or criticize Stalin’s autocratic style of governing. This was a difficult question for many left-wing activists and intellectuals and also a central one for American anti-communism masterminds who precisely targeted the noncommunist left in its battle for the minds at the beginning of the so-called cultural and intellectual Cold War (Gremion 1997; Saunders 2001: Berghahn 2002).

With this world tension as a backdrop, we would like to reflect on a historical and institutional paradox of Trotzkyism, a paradox that could be encapsulated by the phrase: ‘Trotskyism cuts both ways.’ One the one hand, Trotskyism emerged as a powerful critique of Stalinism and of the bureaucratic degenerescence of the Soviet Union, providing an immense appeal for radical leftists unhappy with the path that the leader of ‘socialism in one country’ was showing, while one the other hand, Trotskyism never managed to liberate itself from the Leninist pedigree, one that favors avant-garde type of organization premised on harsh democratic centralism a la Kronstadt which eventually hinder individual autonomy and blossoming of ideological debates (Ali and Evans 1980). Socialisme ou Barbarie perfectly illustrates this, even though it rapidly detached itself from a Trotskyite etiquette.

When related to post-1945 anticommunist struggle, it is striking to see how Trotskyism also cut both ways, historically speaking. Arendt introduced the analytical distinction between ‘ex-communists’ and ‘former communists’ to illustrate different life trajectories. ‘Former communists’ are people who usually did not have a leading position in a communist party and who were mostly fellow travelers, like Picasso or Sartre. When they left the orbit of a communist party, their life moved on, so to say and was not centrally determined by this previous affiliation. ‘Ex-communists’ instead were much more engaged in formal hierarchies of communist party and once they left it, “communism has remained the chief issue of their life” (Arendt 1953: 595). Communism remained central because they have decided to fight communist ideology thanks to their insider’s knowledge. James Burnham (1905–1987) author of the Managerial Revolution and influential conservative intellectuals during the Cold War (Kelly 2008) or Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) as an ex-leader of the KPD and later authors of bestselling novels against the totalitarian Gulag are two prime examples of the trajectories of ‘excommunists’ a la Arendt.

That is where Trotskyism comes as a distinctive marker of anticommunism (a marker that Arendt does not thematize) because of their dual knowledge of communism. Put differently, among the ex-communists, ex-Trotskyites feature prominently for two reasons. First, many Trotskyites were originally members of orthodox communist parties (before adhering to Trotsky’s ideology) and know in full the vulgate that Moscow, from the Third International onwards, managed to impose onto national Communist parties. Leo Trotsky (1879–1940) is the paragon of this gradual distanciation from the Soviet Communist Party, but many others turned Trotskyites either because of the disillusion in the 1930s of the Moscow trials, Stalin’s inaction towards fascisms, or because of the post-WW2 silence of communist parties in front of the Soviet crushing popular uprisings of East Germany in June 1953, of Budapest in 1956, or the Czechoslovak Spring in 1968. Secondly, their intellectual equipment as Trotskyites is precisely built around the criticism of the Soviet Union, with a deep knowledge of the nature of bureaucratic degenerescence. It is therefore no surprise that many ex-Trotskyites were therefore courted in the anti-Soviet battle of the post-WW2 period.

It comes maybe more as a surprise to see that many ex- and former Trotskyites voluntarily embraced anti-communism as way of life. There, the list abounds: in the USA in particular the list of ‘transfuges’ is impressive and significant for the battle of anticommunism: Irving Kristol, Sidney Hook, Sol Levitas, Melvin Lasky, James Burnham who turned most active in the powerful secretly funded CIA-outlet Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) (Scott-Smith 2000, 2002: Saunders 2001), but also former Trotskyites sympathizers include prominent figures of the neoconservative group such as Richard Perle,[310] or Joshua Muravchik (Judis 1995) or influential political scientists such as Martin Seymour Lipset (Guilhot 2005). In Europe, it is more ex-communists that feature on the list of important anti-communist ideologies: people like Arthur Koestler, David Rousset and Boris Souvarine, Igniazio Silone all had a formal role in their respective communist parties (Germany, France and Italy respectively) but none of them were Trostkyites, while people like Raymond Aron, Francois Furet (to quote two influential French intellectuals in the battle against communists) were only ‘former communists’ in Arendt’s classification and remained critical of too blunt external manipulations of social theory by the CIA or US-funded agencies active in anti-communist activities.

Trotskyism thus seems less important in Europe in terms of anti-communism than it has been in the USA. Another difference between US and European Trotskyisms is that in the USA it was one influential party (the Socialist Workers Party) that carried the flag of the Fourth International (although it was decimated by various legal measures against socialist movements (in particular the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947) culminating with the hysteria of McCarthyism in the 1950s). In Europe, instead, a large number of small Trotskyite formations have grown over the post-1945 period. Arguably, these formations have had a lasting impact on political and intellectual debates in Europe. Surely, they never managed to come close to power and always remain very tiny groups (with a maximum of 100 to 200 members in small countries such as Switzerland or Belgium (Challand 2000) and a maximum of 1000 up to 2500 members in large countries such as France or England (and in Italy, in front of the hegemony of the PCI, Trotskyism never made significant inroads on the national level) (Pina 2005). Trotskyist parties, despite the dissolution of communist block in 1989–1991 heralded by many as the end of history, remain serious contenders within the left block up to now: one just needs to look at the five to eight per cent that Trotskyist parties regularly manage to obtain in French elections in the last fifteen years to realize how suited Trotskyism remains to understand current political developments (the internationalist take of Trotskyist ideology is certainly an important asset).

To come back to the idea that Trotskyism cuts both ways,’ one could sustain that while US ex-Trotskyites adhered to the anti-communist battle (Scott-Smith 2000, 2002), the foison of dozens of small splitering groups inspired by Trotskyism might have been an indirect contribution to anticommunism: by always splitting the far-left vote (anarchists being out of the discussion here), all these small Trotskyite factions have also contributed to hindering communist parties and/or broad left alliances to emerge since their declared enemies is less the bourgeois camp than orthodox communist factions and reformist socialist parties.

One could wonder (with great caution, obviously) whether there has never been an external instrumentalization in all these splitings inside Trotskyite movements. How can it be that in each European countries, there have been always two or three different Trotskyite movments, not mot mentioned other hybrid ultra-left parties such as Maoists, Spontaneisits, and Anarcho-syndicalists? It takes resources and financial means to produce leaflets and party organs and one can seriously wonder whether there was never any US monies supporting the foundation of new Trotskyites sub-groupings, which eventually contributed in an effective manner to the dismay of orthodox communist parties and also hindered the emergence of a radical anti-authoritarian left since, as many acknowledge this fact, Trotskyism remains a sort of passage oblige in radical left thinking (but a stage of which one ought to liberate her-himself, as we shall argue later).

As any students of the Fourth International know, charting the history and transformation of all Trotskyite movements is literally impossible as people did and undid new factions on a yearly basis, old parties transformed into two or three new movements overnight (e.g. Candar et al. 2004). The usual Trotskyite joke ‘three Trotskyites, four opinions’ could not be truer. The example of Swiss Trotskyism is quite speaking: out of one rather ‘successful’ party in the 1970s (Challand 2000), the movement survived the early difficult years of the early 1990s but regained momentum in the late 1990s (in part due to the globalization and the emergence of ATTAC in which (former) Trotskyites featured prominently, albeit in an undeclared manner (entrism still at play!)) to fall into the same splitting tendency in the 2000s with now three (!) different formations existing in the French speaking cantons of Switzerland with SolidaritéS[311], Mouvement pour le Socialisme[312] and Gauche Anticapitaliste’[313] splitting thus the radical left allegiances into even tinier portions.

3. The contribution of Socialisme ou Barbarie. When Anarchy (partially) meets Marxism

Coming to the main case-study of this paper, Socialisme ou Barbarie, it has to be underlined that formations close to the Fourth International (founded in 1938 in Paris) went through difficult times during WW2, foremost with the assassination of Trotsky in 1940 and with the repression of communist formations of all pedigrees by fascist regimes. With the end of WW2 and the coming to power (most of the time in a shared manner) of orthodox Communist Parties (in particular in France and Italy), ultra-left formations were also targeted by communist parties themselves (and in Italy, the Justice Ministry Togliatti proved to have a heavy hand against anarchists and Trotskyites/Bordiguistes).[314] The emergence of ultra-left formations was therefore extremely difficult but the burning questions we mentioned in the introduction (to support or not the USSR around 1947–1950) led to the emergence of various radical left groups. In France, the most important group of Trotskyite inspiration was the PCi (Parti communiste internationaliste), founded in February 1944 and which rapidly managed to recruit new militants first and foremost thanks of its anti-chauvinist interpretation of politics.

On top of the question of support or not to the Soviet Union in these troubled period, came a very important question, that of the nature of the USSR. While the Fourth International gave a qualified support to the USSR in the second half of 1940s, a small dissident group emerged inside the PCI refusing to support the USSR based on a different reading of the nature of the Soviet Union. This minority group, called ‘tendance Chaulieu-Montal’ along the name of two of its leaders (Chaulieu being the militant name of Cornelius Castoriadis and Montal that of Claude Lefort), crystallized in 1946 and 1947 and, after the support given by the PCI to Yugoslavia in August 1948, the tendency will turn into a new movement called after its organ Socialisme ou Barbarie (a phrase taken from Rosa Luxemburg’s writings) whose number 1 was published in March 1949 (Gottraux 1997: 21–23). Chaulieu and Montal described the USSR as a country ruled by a bureaucratic class exploiting proletariat and leading to a new perverted form of capitalism, that of State capitalism. The first issue of the organ Socialisme Barbarie set the tone of an ambitious group:

« En nous présentant aujourd’hui, par le moyen de cette revue, devant l’avant-garde des ouvriers manuels et intellectuels, nous savons être les seuls à répondre d’une manière systématique aux problèmes fondamentaux du mouvement révolutionnaire contemporain : nous pensons être les seuls à reprendre et à continuer l’analyze marxiste de l’économie moderne, à poser sur une base scientifique le problème du développement historique du mouvement ouvrier et de sa signification, à définir le stalinisme, et en général la bureaucratie ‘ouvrière,’ à caractériser la Troisième Guerre Mondiale, à poser enfin de nouveau, en tenant compte des éléments originaux créés par noter époque, la perspective révolutionnaire. » (quoted in Gottraux 1997: 23)

We have here all the main battling theme of this emerging faction encapsulated in this short paragraph. While the tone is still imbued with Trotskyite overtones (avant-garde, political economy, bureaucratie ouvriere, internationalist concerns, etc), the movement will gradually become always more and more anti-Leninist and abandon Trotsky’s fixed and rigid interpretation grid to move towards a more fluid and libertarian model of thinking politics (less of doing politics, as we will see). Yet, as we will see, some Trotskyite scoria will remain ingrained in the faction’s machinery up to the point of becoming a true stumbling block for militants leading to internal splits and weakening of the movement.

To understand this distanciation from Trotskyism and formal Marxism, one needs to look at the two main different generations of militants involved in S ou B. The first generation, that of Chaulieu-Montal, can be identified on the basis of what French historian Jean-Fran9ois Sirinelli termed the element fondateur, (Sirinelli 1986, 2005). In the case of this first generation of S ou B, this founding event was clearly WW2. The second generation of militants (J-F Lyotard, Pierre Souyri (1925–1979), Guy Debord (1931–1994), just to quote the more famous ones) will join S ou B because of a second founding event, namely the East German 1953 rebellion (that S ou B interprets as further evidence that working classes are resisting a bureaucratic class in crisis (see Gottraux 1997: 58), the series of strikes in France in the Summer 1955 (heralding the need of worker self-management), and possibly also the Budapest uprising of 1956, all events which gave further credits to S ou B’s interpretation (Gottraux 1997: 58ff).

This second founding event will then usher in a more libertarian approach, increasingly critical to Leninism (despite its plea to remain a revolutionary movement) in which workers’ council will gradually emerged as a new original cornerstone of S ou B’s ideas that moves towards a more libertarian brand of thinking. As a matter of fact, these various rebellions and strikes contribute to S ou B’s rebuke of Lenin’s Que Faire view that posits the “workers’ inability to reach political consciousness without the external and decisive action of the Party” (Gottraux 1997: 31 transl. mine). To the Leninist idea of a “consciousness inculcated from outside,” S ou B sustains that revolutionary ideals and self-organization should stem instead from within the workers community. Castoriadis will famously take up this idea in his ‘Source Hongroise’ (Castoriadis 1976, 1977), a vitriolic text against, a.o., Fourth International (Secretariat Unifie)’s leader Ernest Mandel and classical Trotskyism,[315] in which he elaborates out of past political militancy (the text was published only twenty years later than the actual Budapest uprising) a more elaborate political theory in which autonomy becomes paramount in his elaboration of social consciousness, developed in later philosophical work of Castoriadis in the 1980s (e.g. Castoriadis 1986).

Castoriadis defines autonomy of a society as its capacity of auto-institution, and not just in terms of giving its own laws (Castoriadis 1986: 518). The process of autoinstitution implies the capacity for societies to openly “call into question their own institution, their representation of the world, their social imaginary significations” (Castoriadis 1997: 17). Closure and open-ness are key for Castoriadis’s understanding of autonomy (envisaged as a radical project): closure means here the fact that a given society does not have the possibilities to chose the ways and means in which they reflect about themselves. Closure implies therefore a form of heteronomy, that is the law of others imposed on this society. On the contrary, openness is important not only in terms of choosing its institutional setting but also on an “informational and cognitive” level (Castoriadis 1986: 513).[316] Certainly this theoretical re-elaboration ex post and away from the turbulences of political militancy can be an important contribution to current attempts to fuze Black and Red thinking back together.

In any case, from 1953 onwards the theme of workers’ council features prominently in S ou B’s articles and internal debates. It is also well known that Anton Pannekoek (1873–1960) was exchanging letters with Castoriadis as de facto leader of S ou B, parts of which was also published in S ou B.[317] Pannekoek was an influential Dutch theorician of the workers’ councils who had written extensively on the topic, and this well before S ou B. His main book on the topic published in 1943 under the pseudonym of P. Aartsz (De Arbeitsraden) was very influential for councilism but also for his reading of modern capitalism not determinically meant to come to its auto destruction, as orthodox stage-based Marxism claims, but, in an interpretation reminiscent of Boltanski and Chiapello’s Nouvel esprit du capitalisme (1999), Pannekoek saw in capitalism an innate capacity of continuous adaptation (even in difficult times), allowing it to survive and transform itself into an always stronger ideology (Bourseiller 2003[318]: 140).

An in-depth analysis of modern capitalism was also a cheval de bataille of S ou B, especially from the late 1950s onwards. Castoriadis published thus two influential articles in 1960–1961 on the topic of ‘Le mouvement revolutionnaire sous le capitalisme moderne.’[319] Castoriadis treats of the classical Marxist theme of political alienation but attributes western societies’ depoliticization as a “co-substantial part of modernization” and an increasing bureaucratization of social life (Gottraux 1997: 135f), which in turns destroys the political dimension of the socialization processes. Castoriadis comes to the conclusion that mainstream Marxism fails to fully grasp social change when it concentrates its attention to economic factors (a la Ricardo), overlooking thus the political transformation of advanced capitalist societies, the irrationality of bureaucratic managements (ibid. 137–38), and the increasing role of so-called ‘technocrats’ and ‘experts’ leading to the gradual apathy of western societies living now in abundance (Castoriadis 1960: 63). These transformations and the false trail taken by mainstream Marxist makes it, so Castoriadis argues, even more difficult for a revolutionary movement to exist and perform its task.

All these are themes that will certainly influence the next generation of militants, in particular the one that emerges with 1968 and in the 1970s, a generation keen to hammer down libertarian slogans, to dispute political apathy and alienation of capitalist society, and to suggest more libertarian strategies to pervert the dominant bourgeois order. The proletariat does not exist anymore as it did in the nineteenth century and is increasingly part of a transformed society of the spectacle. It is not by coincidence that Guy Debord milted in the ranks of Socialisme ou Barbarie for a short time in 1960–1961, precisely when Castoriadis posed its diagnosis on working class and revolutionary movements at a time of full employment and booming economy. Debord will certainly take these themes on another level, that of the spontaneist theory, but the intellectual filiations of Debord’s ideas as part of this ultra-left milieu that becomes also gradually anti-Marxist, is undisputed, in our view. This encounter between S ou B and Debord (who had also different influences such as Surrealism, Spontaneism, not to mention the influence of Henri Lefebvre) is also an interesting lesson in terms of cross-fertilizations between different Marxist(-Leninist) dogmas. Debord’s new critique of the societe du spectacle remains a frame of analysis that proves most useful in our current epoch saturated with globalized images and manipulated pixels and whose premises can provide food for thoughts for Red and Black intersecting ideas. As in the line of Castoriadis’ 1960 and 1961 reflexions, Marxist thinking should not limit to economic and too sheer political features, but also explores the imaginary dimension of capitalist domination (a la Debord) and the role that the irrational is meant to play in our society (Bottici 2007).

4. When Anarchy fails to meet Marxism

Socialisme ou Barbarie surely gradually evolved from a quasi-Trotskyite movement (in which the Leninist model of revolutionary movements was central for the first years of the movement) into an ultra-left anti-Marxist movement spearheaded by Castoriadis (Gottraux 1997: 360). Its influence, overall, is certainly more important on the intellectual and academic scene since many prominent French intellectuals transited in its orbit at one point or another, than on the political level where its impact has remained very low—but this is true for all organizations of the ultra-left camp. This conclusion is corroborated by the simple fact that S ou B had a very low number of militants, ranging between 20 members in 1951 and 87 a decade later (Gottraux 1997: 40, 104). However, its publications will certainly be influential beyond this small groups and Gottraux has suggested that the ideas of S ou B have influenced the work of many other French periodicals reaching out therefore much more than the only militancy basis of S ou B (Gottraux 1997: 255–314).

One of the possible reasons for this hiatus between a very small, quasi intimate, group and a arguably rather broad influence owes both to its internal organization and to the centralistic role played by Castoriadis. For the former reason, one can quote the fact that recruitment took place only by cooptation, limiting therefore the capacity of expansion of the movement. For the second factor, Gottraux, out of interviews and internal documents analyzed, demonstrates that Castoriadis was a ‘control freak’ and that he was constantly steering the course of the debates and imposing, more than once, his personal will onto the rest of the group. Before giving examples of the control imposed by Castoriadis on the life of S ou B, one should not forget to underline the paradox of the promoter of the idea of ‘autonomy’ as a central feature of democratic society and his tendency to kill in the egg any new dissenting ideas within S ou B. Here again, the influence of Trotskyism (and of its stark view on the Leninist organization of the party based on democratic centralism) could probably explain Castoriadis’ modus operandi and give further ground to the idea that Trotskyism cuts both ways in its lasting influence.

The most prominent example of Castoriadis’ central role comes from the internal scission in 1958. In the tormented context of the dying days of the IV Republique, strong disagreements emerged inside S ouB on the nature of De Gaulle’s intervention and which interpretation to give to the PCF ambiguous stance in what has been dubbed ‘the permanent Coup of De Gaulle.’ Castoriadis, and with him the majority group, argues for the need of a more structured S ou B, while the minority, led by Montal (Lefort) was against such transformation of the organization, fearing “derapages bureaucratiques.” Castoriadis, invoking “collective discipline,” manages to silence the minority. Lefort saw in this attitude of Castoriadis an “avatar of democratic centralism” and decided to leave the organizations in September 1958 (Gottraux 1997: 89.-91).

In this context, Gottraux also reveals that the minority had taken contact with Pannekoek and the Dutch council movement (ibid 92), which means that the minority felt at odds and unease with the ways that Castoriadis wanted to reform the organization. Castoriadis’ reluctance to seriously engage the anarchist road of workers’ council or that suggested by Pannekoek antedated this troubled period for S ou B. Already in 1954 when Pannekoek and Castoriadis exchanged correspondence, Castoriadis seemed to have had intentions not to fully enter in a dialogue. Bourseiller suggests that Castoriadis did not respond diligently to the letters, expressing a will to procrastinate and not communicate the content of the letters to the rest of the militants of S ou B (Bourseiller 2003: 246). Bourseiller goes on wondering whether Castoriadis felt his intellectual and ideological primacy threatened by the content of Pannekoek’s message, but one could also think that the content of the message could have served militants of S ou B in their argument to have a less centrally structured movement and promote thus a more anarchist model of self-organization.

The fact is that some of the functioning of S ou B was premised on councilist ideas, with, in theory at least, the possibility to revoke some of the rotating representation in leading committees (like the Comite Responsable) (Gottraux 1997: 34). The problem is that the substance and influences of Pannekoek and from workers’ council’s ideas have not trickled down into the organizational life of S ou B. In theory, Castoriadis promotes autonomy and criticized the bureaucratic degenerescence of many Marxist organizations, but in reality, the rhythm of life and spans of ideas discussed inside S ou B were pulsated almost uniquely by Castoriadis. For example, this quote of Castoriadis during the strikes in the Renault factory in 1955 and 1956 seems more the injunction of a Trotskyite leader than an anarchist one: “ Il faut s’accrocher, preciser quels camarades doivent aller au reunions de TO [Tribune Ouvriere]; ces camarades doivent decider a l’avance des critiques a faire et fournir des textes a TO.” Not by coincidence, most of those who were militants and have become influential intellectuals (Lefort, Debord and Lyotard) have all decided to leave the organizations because of disagreements with Castoriadis. There can be only one boss in S ou B, so it seems.

This problem is also one shared by many Trotskyite organizations. Looking at the experience of the Swiss branch of the Fourth International, the Ligue Marxiste Revolutionnaire, its history shows that personal in-fights all resulted in the demission of minority leaders and the historical leader (Charles-Andre Udry) remained the only boss in town, so to say (Challand 2000[320]). The decade long Trotskyite divisions between Lambertistes, Laguillier and Krivine can also be seen as a bataille des chefs, more than an ideological one. Beyond the personal motives, there are other basic and shared factors for resignations and withdrawals from Trotskyite movements: stiffness of the organization, weight of the democratic centralism principles, need to over-commit to the organizations and generational tensions (Challand 2000: Chapters 8 and 9). The fact is that some of these factors are also found in the ebbs and flows of S ou B, although it was meant to have emancipated itself from its Trotskyite origins.

5. Conclusions: The limits of collective autonomy

The paper has explored the life and evolution of an influential movement that drew inspirations both from Trotskyism and from Anarchism. There the encounter between anarchism and Marxism was lived in discussions and articles, less in concrete daily life of the movement. The paper has also noted how Trotskyism in general has serious problems despite parts of its ideological accuracy (need of internationalization of political struggle, reading of the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic degenerescence). It has cut both ways on many occasions, in part opening new avenues for political participation on the far left, at times splitting even more this part of the political spectrum.

Historically, there is no doubt that such ultra-left movements have evolved and expanded in historical moments of critical junctures. WW2 was a founding events for the first founding generations of new (filo-)Trotskyite movements (PCI, S ou B), as much as the 1956 crisis and later 1968 Czech Spring brought to militancy new generations. In our society of spectacle in which reigns political apathy, it is difficult to imagine that new events of these types could generate renewed militancy. The economic crisis could be such a triggering factor bringing new militants to reflect on the need of Black and Red programs. But this is not sure.

Conclusion to be expanded (in particular more on why and how the paradoxes of

S ou B could be overcome today)

Bibliography