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• Part 11, Chapter 3 : Victor Serge — A Man of Our Time

Victor Serge — A Man of Our Time

Suzi Weissman[547]

Victor Serge: From the Defeated Past to the Expectant Future

In the wake of the collapse of the USSR “statism” was roundly attacked east and west. This was the free market offensive that was pushed during the 1990s and the first part of the new century. Under attack were the bureaucratized former Soviet bloc economies to be sure, but anti-statist reforms were also imposed to dismantle social democratic gains everywhere. Not content with these ideological victories, the free marketeers went after the crony capitalist regimes in the Far East, chaebol and otherwise. Privatization, free trade, and free markets became the buzzwords of the day. Anarchism on the right and left seemed to dominate the discourse. No longer: the worldwide economic slump/epic recession/depression awakened the sense that governments could provide some form of security. This point resonates more in the US than in social democratic Europe, however much welfare provisions were weakened during the decades of free market euphoria. A safety net still exists in much of Europe, while it was largely shredded in the US. This new political conjuncture colors the form opposition takes, making the question posed by this volume — Is Black and Red Dead? -all the more relevant.

So how does Victor Serge fit into this debate and why do I insist that he is a man for our time?

Victor Serge had an enormous impact on the developing consciousness of revolutionary Marxists, libertarians and anarchists all over the world. He was the best known Trotskyist of his time, though his relationship with the Trotskyist movement was contentious. Just to mention Serge conjures up the poetic, active expression of an era. He was with the revolutionary Marxists who refused to surrender to the Stalinist counter-revolution and who struggled so that their ideas would escape Stalin’s attempt to exterminate them. It is this that makes his work so powerful. Serge has been called the poet, the bard, the journalist and the historian of the Left Opposition.[548] He was also its conscience.

Like his Left Oppositionist comrades, Serge was marginalized by history precisely because he rejected capitalism as well as Stalinism. His contribution is attractive today because he never compromised his commitment to the creation of a society that defends human freedom, enhances human dignity and improves the human condition. Serge lived in the maelstrom of the first half of the 20^th Century, but his ideas have contemporary relevance in the post-Soviet, post Cold War world of the early 21^st century.

Serge: Our Contemporary

As the 20^th Century drew to a close, the Soviet Union collapsed and with it the colossal battle of ideas it provoked nearly disappeared from public discourse. How could the ideas and struggles that Serge represented, now deemed passe, resonate anew?

With the demise of Stalinism, the victors of the Cold War proclaim there is no alternative to Western style capitalist democracy, even as inequalities deepen and religious nationalists resort to terror. With all the insecurity and uncertainty of our time of grotesque inequality and reactionary response, a new generation has taken to the streets demanding a better world, and what is more, insisting that it is possible. As one sorts through the intellectual and political disputes of the disastrous Soviet experience, one is struck by the voice and testimony of Victor Serge, which stand out for their probity, rigor and deeply human concerns. His works address the paramount and still unresolved important issues of the day: human liberty, autonomy, and dignity. He belonged to a revolutionary generation that sought to create a society sufficient to meet these human goals. They failed, but he spent the rest of his life describing their attempt and analyzing the defeat. For that reason his work merits republication, analysis, interpretation, and above all, rescue.

While Victor Serge wrote of the time he lived through, his thinking is relevant for the struggles we face. Reacquainting ourselves with Serge can help us imagine — and hopefully create — the future.

Victor Serge died at age 57 in 1947. In that brief lifespan he participated in three revolutions, spent a decade in captivity, published more than thirty books and left behind a substantial archive of unpublished work. He was born into one political exile, died in another, and was politically active in seven countries. His life was spent in permanent political opposition. Serge opposed capitalism — first as an anarchist, then as a Bolshevik. He opposed Bolshevism’s undemocratic practices and then opposed Stalin as a Left Oppositionist. He argued with Trotsky from within the anti-Stalinist left; and he opposed fascism and capitalism’s Cold War as an unrepentant revolutionary Marxist. He was a revolutionary novelist and historian. Though he is still little known in the former Soviet Union, he was one of the most lucid observers of its early political developments, chronicling in his many works its brutal departure from the ideals of the revolution of 1917.

Serge’s political experience led him not to renounce socialism once Stalin had triumphed, but to bring to it a declaration of human rights, enriching socialist goals. He opposed the one party system, declaring as early as 1918 and again in 1923 that a coalition government, although fraught with dangers, would have been less dangerous than what was to transpire under Stalin’s dictatorship of the secretariat and the secret police. His proposals for economic reform included ‘workers democracy’ and a ‘communism of associations’ instead of rigid, top-down, anti-democratic ‘plans.’ Serge was never guilty of an ahistorical analysis, and he realized the choices facing the Bolsheviks after the Civil War were few. Not seeing what lay ahead, they feared the revolution could be drowned in blood by reactionary forces. Too many of their decisions were influenced by party patriotism.

Reading Serge’s body of work on the USSR is indispensable for anyone who wants to get a feel for the atmosphere of the 1920’s and 30s inside the Soviet Union and the Communist movement, and he spelled out the dilemmas of the 1940s with a sense of immediacy and clarity. This contributes to his current appeal — because he literally recalls another world. In fact rescuing Serge from obscurity helps recapture a vital sense of history, one that salvages what should always have been a truism — that democracy is a crucial component of socialism.

Serge’s early influences were anarchist. His parents were Russian anarcho- populists from the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will); his uncle was executed for his participation in the assassination of Czar Alexander II. Serge’s parents had to flee their native Russia when the repression following the assassination completely broke the organization (Narodnaya Volya.) Thus, Serge was born in exile in Belgium and spent his early years there (and in London). He wrote in his Memoirs that his parents’ house in Brussels was a gathering place for other anarchist exiles, and on the walls hung portraits of executed anarchists. It is no wonder that his early political commitment was anarchist.

To understand Serge’s political journey, context is critical. Serge was born in 1890. At age 15 he first joined the Belgian Young Socialists. He moved toward anarchism in disgust and impatience: the Belgian social democrats were simply opportunistic, corrupt and stuck in electoral politics. More importantly, it was 1905, the year that saw the birth of the Wobblies, path-breaking discoveries, and gigantic struggles. The General Strike in Russia spread to Finland, there were strike waves in France, Belgium, Germany and beyond. Serge and his young comrades were animated by this surge of struggle which put the reformism of the Belgian social democrats in even starker light. They were attracted to the actions as well as the passions of the strikers in Petrograd and elsewhere. Looking at Belgium, Serge became disillusioned with the social democratic leaders, as well as the masses who lacked the heroic militancy he saw in Russia. He and his friends moved to anarchist individualism. His early anarchism was an extension of his boyhood friendships and his commitment to liberty and action, as well as his disgust with the stodgy social democratic misleaders of his time.

Serge’s early conviction was that of an individualist anarchist, but he ‘graduated’ from the individualist and even illegalist views to that of anarcho-syndicalism and from there to Bolshevism. This all took place from 1909–1917.

Just to read a sampling of Serge’s work affirms that he was an active anarchist, but it is also clear that he was open-minded and adventurous. He experimented with vegetarianism, lived in an anarchist commune, and his childhood friends were involved in the infamous Bonnot gang, as was Serge, at least intellectually. Serge did not accept, nor ever submit himself and his action to the dictates of any authority. He changed, as did a generation by the actuality of the first socialist revolution, the Russian Revolution.

In the dock in 1913 at the sensational political trial of the infamous Bonnot gang (the social bandits of pre-war France who were ruthlessly repressed), Serge kept solidarity while drawing the distinction between anarchism and ‘illegalism.’ Though part of the Bonnot gang, Serge (still going by the name Kibalchich then) was a propagandist rather than a bandit. When the verdicts came in Serge was sentenced to five years in solitary as the intellectual ringleader. Even during this period Serge wrote (signing his articles “Le Retif” or the stubborn one) that his multiple political commitments of the time demonstrated his growing ambivalence with individualism and his attraction to the developing revolutionary ferment in Russia. He argued he was moving from individualism to social action. From 1908 on Serge wrote against the ill-advised, even mad violence and futile tactics and ideals of the Bonnot bandits. In the Memoirs Serge described their descent into violence as “a kind of madness” and “like a collective suicide.”[549]

Serge conceded that at the time “we wanted to be revolutionaries; we were only rebels.” It was in fact the five years in prison, plus his fifteen months in the concentration camp at Precigne where he was in a Bolshevik study circle that Serge reflected, studied seriously and grew politically. By his own admission he considered anarchism a dead end as early as 1913, but did not make the move to Bolshevism for another five years. In Spain in 1917 Serge left behind his anarcho-individualism, participated in the syndicalist uprising, took on the name Victor Serge and then began his journey to his never-seen homeland, the Russia of revolution.

He never looked back: he didn’t try some impossible mix of anarchism and Bolshevism, he became a Bolshevik and then a Left Oppositionist. Not only did he break with anarchism, he wrote in “l’anarchisme” that beginning with Bakunin the anarchist movement had its share of authoritarian and intolerant characters[550] and that anarchists fail to recognize the necessity of large industrial organization, the importance of political power in social struggles, the complexity of social development and the impossibility of building an equitable and free society without passing through diverse phases of transition. Its doctrine, Serge noted, is idealist and completely utopianist.[551]

Beginning in 1918 Serge took it upon himself, as an anarchist turned Bolshevik to persuade his anarchist comrades to support the Bolsheviks. Serge himself writes a critique of the anarchists later, mentioned above. He was a man of action, but even more a man of letters: that is his dual character, and we know of Serge because of the literary legacy he has left us.

Serge himself was a worker, and spent his entire life in poverty. He worked in printshops and was a member of the printers union in Spain. He also worked as a copyeditor, and translator. He had no need to ‘glorify’ the working class, nor did he hold back when he was disappointed in missed opportunities by the class. As a writer, he was committed to “expressing to men what most of them live inwardly without being able to express, as a means of communion, a testimony to the vast flow of life through us, whose essential aspects we must try to fix for the benefit of those who will come after us.”[552]

Serge’s journey from ‘black’ to ‘red’ followed the momentous historical cleavages of the day: war, revolution, civil war. He arrived in the Soviet Union in the frozen winter of January 1919, the country engulfed in Civil War. He chose sides, joining with the revolution and the Bolsheviks, though already alarmed that the vibrant instruments of soviet democracy were being shut down and red terror matched the ferocious terror of the whites. Totalitarianism hardly existed as a word, but it was emergent in post-Civil War Russia. Serge’s eyes were wide open, and he sensed the dangers to come, was torn by the distance between theory and reality, the growth of privilege and bureaucracy. Like Lenin and Trotsky, Serge understood the giant obstacles that stood in the way of socialist development in backward Russia, yet also understood that history provided few alternatives — and Serge decided that Bolshevism was “tremendously and visibly right. It marked a new point of departure in history.”[553] Capitalism seemed finished, if not suicidal after World War I. The inter-war period was so unstable that the survival of civilization was in question if capitalism was not transformed. Yet in the young Soviet Union the promises of the revolution were being abandoned. Serge wrote:

Over all our achievements there hung a death-sentence; since for all of us, for our ideals, for the new justice that was proclaimed, for our new collective economy. Still in its infancy, defeat would have brought a peremptory death and after that, who knows what? I thought of the Revolution as a tremendous sacrifice that was required for the future’s sake; and nothing seemed to me more essential than to sustain, or rescue, the spirit of liberty within it.[554]

Serge belonged to a critically minded and intelligent group of old Bolsheviks[555] who resolutely resisted totalitarianism, a large group he insisted was right at the heart of Bolshevism.[556] They fought a losing battle because of Stalin’s stranglehold on all forms of political and organizational expression. Serge believed the solution lay in pushing for a revival of the soviets as an arena of free political activity. Instead the entire current of old Bolsheviks was slaughtered, and any hope of socialist revival died with them.

This experience of defeat informed all of Serge’s thinking, writing and activity. He warned all along of the inherent dangers of a ‘totalitarian way of thinking’ — based not on looking for truth, but on conducting a political fight. This method, Serge reminded us, developed under the weight of the Stalinist machine which engaged in a distortion of thought, fraud and massacres so monstrous as to be unimaginable.

Defeat, Renewal and Democracy — the heart of socialism

Stalin was insecure in power and became obsessed with obliterating opposition at home and abroad. It may seem surprising that he concentrated such fury and zeal in hunting down the rather small number of Trotskyists and oppositionists who challenged his rule in far left journals and organizations in the West in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The mighty effort to extinguish the small flames of defiance seems out of proportion to other tasks at hand, like preparing for war. But Marxist critics like Trotsky and Serge were not just a thorn in Stalin’s side, but a moral reproach to his rule. Better to silence them, to prevent their voices from finding large audiences. Trotsky was assassinated in August 1940, but Serge survived and continued to write in profusion. His final essays and thoughts were devoted completely to analyzing the features of the postwar period and to his insight that socialism would have to undergo a renewal in order to remain relevant.

Yet before Trotsky was assassinated there were four years that both Trotsky and Serge were in the West and could collaborate. Think of the power of their combined voices and cogent writings ! Stalin had erred in expelling them both: perhaps he hadn’t imagined that in exile they would challenge every aspect of his betrayals and murders. Trotsky led a sustained fight against Stalin since his expulsion in 1929, exposing his crimes to the world. In 1936 Serge joined Trotsky in exile, another Bolshevik with an eloquent voice and pen who had stood with Trotsky since 1923 could now fortify the fight against Stalin’s crimes. How tragic then, that these anti-Stalinist voices were divided, that their relationship became acrimonious.

Trotsky’s assassination was a terrible blow to the followers of his thought everywhere. Those who were inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution lacked the experience Trotsky’s revolutionary generation had in organizing, building and making a successful revolution. As a consequence there was a theoretical and organizational dependence that naturally developed and was profoundly affected by Trotsky’s death. In some ways revolutionary thinking was frozen in the 1940 mindset.

Serge was a vital link to that generation, even though he arrived on the Soviet scene just after the first year in January 1919. Stalin’s GPU agents were active in promoting divisions among the International Left Opposition militants and Victor Serge was a victim of their dirty, divisive work.[557] But political differences and organizational practices were also responsible for straining his relations with Trotsky.[558] Serge took part in the Fourth International though he found the internal atmosphere stifling and “could not detect [in the FI] the hope of the Left Opposition in Russia for a renewal of the ideology, morals and institutions of Socialism.”[559] Serge was convinced that “Socialism too had to renew itself in the world of today, and that this must take place through the jettisoning of the authoritarian, intolerant tradition of turn-of-the-century Russian Marxism.”

These perceptions put Serge at odds with the Trotskyist movement in the West: Here was a talented, compelling Left Oppositionist, the best known Trotskyist in many intellectual circles, yet his unorthodox approach was criticized by Trotsky and Trotskyists and caused much grief for Serge, isolating him from the very movement — the Left Opposition — that he had devoted so many years to and at such risk.

From Serge’s ‘present’ to ours

In several of the essays Serge wrote in the last years of his life, he looked forward from the defeats inflicted by Stalinism and Fascism and called for a renewal of socialism. Sixty years later the call remains unanswered. As the post Cold War era struggles for definition and the world faces a bleak landscape of competing religious nationalisms, the virtual collapse of Finance capital and devastating economic crisis, the renewal of socialism seems more urgent than ever.

Reviewing the issues that preoccupied Serge’s thinking in these dark years yields much to reclaim for the present day, even though the context of his time is radically different from the ‘present’ we inhabit. Serge was writing during WWII and the immediate postwar environment, before the Cold War began.[560] How could he have imagined the end of the USSR, the decline of social democracy, the neo-liberals, neo- cons and the rise of obscurantist religious terrorists? Yet the tendencies he noted and the questions he asked in their regard are relevant. On this note Serge proved prescient: if an historically conscious collectivism did not successfully challenge the totalitarian collectivism of Stalinism and fascism, it would mean the end of socialism for a whole era.

Serge held that the axioms from the Russian Revolution were no longer adequate. Writing in 1943, he observed that everything — science, production, social movements and intellectual currents — all had changed. History permitted apparent stability only to religious dogmas. An intellectual rearmament was necessary. As Serge noted, “the poverty of traditional socialism coincides ... with the immense revolutionary crisis of the modern world that has unavoidably put on the order of the day... independently of the action of socialism — the problem of a social reorganization oriented toward the rational and the just.”[561] Serge couldn’t emphasize strongly enough that the socialist movement had to break free from its fossilized thinking, and that the terrible new conditions demanded a new approach — dialectical thought combined with political action, a form of active humanism.

Serge was grappling with new uncertainties, frustrated by the inability of socialists to think creatively in their attempts to interpret the new world conjuncture. The USSR represented a new force in the world that was neither capitalist nor socialist, but altered the nature of class struggle in the world. It was now an obstacle to socialism, exerting a negative influence on all current struggles. We have yet to recover from its damage.

It was sobering to realize that collectivism was not synonymous with socialism (as Serge and his comrades had previously thought) and could in fact be anti-socialist, demonstrating new forms of exploitation. The world had changed, and the old theories didn’t explain the role of Stalinist expansion. Stalin drowned socialism in blood, creating a terrible system that became equated with Marxism. The intellectual weakness of the socialist movement (sapped of its energies by the formidable Stalinist machine) could only be remedied by an “epoch of uprising.”[562]

We are ostensibly entering that epoch of uprising, however uneven its ‘eruptions.’ Unemployed immigrant youth rebelled in confusion, anger and frustration, bereft of the intellectual armor required in France in 2005, while super-exploited immigrant labor massively demonstrated in the United States in 2006. By 2008 the world financial system virtually collapsed, though swift intervention in the form of bailouts prevented capitalism from going under. Reeling from the blows of joblessness and insecurity the workers’ response has been tepid at best, atomized and overshadowed in the US by extreme right-wing so-called populist rage. The Greek youth rebellion of Christmas 2008, the boss-nappings in France are signs that creative social revolt is on the order of the day, though it hardly means the end of capitalism, just bright spots along the way. Yet the hope persists that the economy and society can be organized to serve humanity and the community — not the reverse.

Serge misjudged the tendencies he noted, believing the world was in transition away from capitalism under the influence of the Soviet Union. Unlike other thinkers of the time, Serge did not proclaim socialism a failure, but called for its rebirth. He insisted the aims must be for a society that guarantees human freedom — in the interests of more than just the working masses, for all of humanity. Democracy must mean democracy of work; liberty must mean personal and political freedom.

We are far from realizing these goals, yet ever more people are posing the need to achieve them. The release in 2009 of Michael Moore’s film “Capitalism, A Love Story” calls for capitalism to be replaced by ‘democracy,’ a democracy that includes economic democracy. The debasement of the very language of liberation by the Stalinist regimes posing as socialists requires, it seems, euphemisms for socialism.

However difficult the present may seem, it is salient to recall the situation of Left Oppositionists like Serge who survived the ‘30s when they were hounded by the NKVD and the Gestapo, and who rejected both Stalinism and the Cold War liberalism of capitalism. Serge cautioned that negativism is an attitude, not a solution. All we have left is intelligence, that is, knowledge and technique, and an inner impulse for a more dignified life. In response to the many socialists who had reverted to Christian mysticism or to those who retreated to individual acts of conscience, Serge noted that scruples and the courage of conscience are absolute necessities, but have no social value unless conjoined with action that is persevering, general and draws in the greatest numbers. That was in 1945, but could have been written for today. Serge concluded that a progressive movement is needed.[563]

Not just any progressive movement, but one that had a sense of history and recognized that democracy — control from below — is essential. Again, what was true then remains so today. The Stalinist scourge nearly eradicated the notion that socialism is full democracy, and rendered it equivalent in the popular mind with anti-democracy.

Much of what Serge wrote is the product of his efforts to come to grips with a world where totalitarianism and totalitarian collectivism, as he called it, dominated both the Soviet Union and, increasingly, Western Europe. At war’s end, with fascism defeated and Stalinism surviving, Serge was left to survey the landscape, to map the contours of the world in process of becoming. Of course he couldn’t see past the period he lived in, and his vision proved wrong for the most part. In our present post-Cold War world of decline, Serge’s call for a renewal of socialist thinking is long overdue.

The world Serge believed lay ahead does not exist. We live in an era of failed neo-liberalism and cannibalistic finance capital. Specious stability and security are interrupted by uncomfortable reminders of grotesque inequalities and dashed aspirations, by spontaneous riots and mass rebellions, or vile acts of individual terror that wreak havoc and invite repression in the form of restricted civil liberties. The surviving super-power — the US — stumbles in anarchic decline seemingly unable and/or

unwilling to respond to catastrophes of the natural, political and economic, except to crack down and attack living standards.[564] The election of Barack Obama brought a sense of relief and unleashed pent-up hope, but promised reforms hardly match the speed of the collapsing economy and increasingly volatile climactic conditions.

Stalinism and the Cold War were disastrous for socialism. The left remains marginal in the West and religious fundamentalism grips much of the Middle East where the left was systematically repressed, killed or forced into exile. What, then, of Serge’s thinking is relevant for the present we ourselves inhabit and the future we face? What can be salvaged from his writings, given so much has changed?

For Serge the struggle to renew required creative thought, but also fealty to the principles of democracy, liberty, free inquiry, and in general, the conditions to enhance human dignity. For us, it also requires a commitment to full democracy. In the post-Cold War world ailing parliamentary democracy has been degraded beyond restitution. Today the struggle for democracy is a direct struggle for new forms of democratic decision-making, exercised locally from below — call it ‘genuine’ or ‘authentic’ democracy, but in a word it is the struggle for socialism. Democracy is not an accessory of the revolutionary process; it is at the heart of the socialist project. Socialism without democracy isn’t socialism.

Democracy and Socialism

Looking back at what happened to soviet democracy — socialist democracy — in the Soviet Union is instructive, given the influence that the Russian revolution has had on all subsequent revolutionary struggles. The problem for the Bolsheviks was that their commitment to democracy from below was underdeveloped and then sacrificed by the dire conditions during the civil war and the threat of reaction. Stalin obliterated the issue completely in later years.[565] As much as we scrutinize the Russian revolutionary experience, it is of limited utility for the present — the specific conditions they faced do not exist and won’t be repeated.

The Soviets did not live up to their promise as institutions of democratic control, and they survived the Civil War in name only. Reviving the Soviets in the situation of the 1920s was not a high priority, despite the Left Opposition’s critique of growing bureaucratization and the stifling of democracy in the Party. The issue of democracy in the society as a whole was rarely addressed. Serge raised the issue of revitalizing political parties and political life, yet even while demanding democracy both in and out of the party, Serge admitted that after 1921 “everybody that aspires to socialism is inside the party; what remains outside isn’t worth much for the social transformation.” This explains to some degree their concentration on inner-party democracy rather than on revitalizing democratic institutions for the society at large. This presented a contradiction for the Bolsheviks who recognized that the soviets were both the tool of the proletariat in the revolutionary process and the form of transition to socialism: internationalism was more important to them than ensuring the survival of democracy. Socialism is control from below and soviets in theory are the instrument. But the Bolsheviks in power in the 1920s were less concerned with soviet democracy than with the danger of capitalist restoration. The revolution was under siege: the SRs took up arms against the Bolsheviks, and the suppression of the Kronstadt revolt was the last straw for the anarchists. The Bolsheviks hadn’t intended to rule alone, but they only trusted themselves to understand the nature of the struggle for socialism in the world — no other political party saw the importance of the extension of the revolution as the only way they could survive, so Lenin and Trotsky didn’t trust the others to rule with them. With the Bolsheviks representing the majority in the soviets, the locus of activity shifted to what they saw as the more important political arena of the Party. So the contradictions residing in creating vibrant revolutionary institutions of democratic control from below were evident from the outset.

The question of forms, however, is still important. The promise of socialism was of a genuine democracy with soviets or councils as the organizational form. Workers would be the masters of their destiny: people would organize collectively, at every level from bottom to top to become the masters of their work, their lives and their fate. The Russian revolution held out the promise of socialism, but it was doomed by its isolation and dashed by the rise of Stalin.

Given the huge influence the experience of the Russian revolution had on revolutionaries everywhere thereafter, the particular circumstances that choked democracy in the USSR were overlooked while the authoritarian model was generalized. The marker of a healthy revolution — organs of democratic control from below as an integral part of a successful revolution and transition — was relegated to rhetoric, not reality.

The few successful revolutions after the Russian revolution developed as copies of the Stalinized Soviet Union: bureaucratic, authoritarian, anti-democratic and often nationalist societies with little resemblance to socialism. Yet in the postwar (WWII) West, democratic advances were being won by socialists in the labor movement, in effect enhancing democracy. Serge recognized that “socialism has only been able to grow within bourgeois democracy (of which it was a large extent the creator)”[566] and cautioned that further advances were only possible through utmost intransigence against Stalinism and capitalist conservatism. He understood that this principled fight would be a revolutionary one.

It may seem paradoxical that the Soviet Union crushed democracy at home and betrayed the revolution’s promise — yet that promise influenced democratic reforms in the industrialized capitalist countries. Important elements of a more advanced political democracy, such as universal franchise, representative democracy, free speech and other basic rights, were won and conceded to in response to the existence of the Soviet Union and to contain radicalism at home.

The democratic gains of the second half of the 20^th Century, brought by the labor, Civil rights and the women’s movements significantly deepened democracy leading to substantial changes in advanced industrial democracies without appreciably deepening the struggle for “economic democracy” or further specific workers rights.[567]

These reforms strengthened democracy, but cut into the profitability of capitalism. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the social democratic concessions were less necessary, and increasingly difficult to deliver in the age of finance capital. Perhaps it is no surprise then that the collapse of the Soviet Union hastened the decline of social democracy. At the same time, we are seeing the hollowing out of bourgeois democracy, perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in the United States itself. It is caricatured in the so-called new democracies of the former Soviet bloc and in occupied Iraq. The promise of democracy is potent and even risky. More and more people demand the genuine article, not managed electoral shams — as we have seen in the continued so-called colored revolutions ousting leaders who cheated their way to power in fraudulent elections, or even the rage and hope galvanized by the Obama election in the US.

The 21^st Century began with the pessimism of TINA (there is no alternative), while the clarion call of the anti-globalization activists is that ‘another world is possible.’ The disintegration of the USSR left in its wake revulsion and rejection of statist solutions and has provoked a resurgence of vague pro-anarchist sentiments evident in social movements left and right. The reaction in the former Soviet Union (FSU) was hardly surprising given the power of its state over every aspect of people’s lives. More surprising perhaps is that the yearning for a time of order and security has made the time of Stalin seem desirable in comparison. (This requires not rose-colored glasses, but a denial of history ! )

The intellectual rearmament Serge called for has not occurred. If anything, more confusion rather than less reigns today, in this period of generalized attack on living standards and democratic rights. Reaction to these class-based policies has given rise to nostalgia for the nation-state, as if it were a benign structure the forces of globalization and Wall Street have undermined. As workers vainly look to the nation state for protection against the forces of globalizing capital, they are demanding that the state conserve the social democratic benefits won through years of struggle. But social democracy in effect was capitalism=s response to the Russian Revolution, and as the USSR imploded social democracy also fell into decline.

Despite the advances that have been won, the labor and socialist movements have been weakened in the age of finance capital and this is directly tied to the decline of bourgeois democracy. In the US, government efficiency is an oxymoron, bureaucratic rigidity gets in the way of delivering relief and the actual exercise of democracy is hugely tainted by corruption and vast infusions of money.

Authentic democracy — control from below — requires a sufficient level of understanding and education, and is impossible if money has influence in the process. In many ways the struggle for this bottom up democracy is a revolutionary struggle that involves coming up with better forms than the soviets promised: getting real democracy means getting revolutionary. We can’t presume in advance what forms the working class will take when it acts for itself. The political form will be determined by the struggle itself, though without control from below in a society that is progressively eliminating the division of labor, and has a high level of education and participation, substantive democracy remains but a dream.

In 1943 Victor Serge wrote that “we are prisoners of social systems worn to the point of breakdown,” and he lamented that even the clear-sighted are half-blind, filled with confused hopes. What was true mid-20^th century is also true today. The renewal of socialism depends on our discarding all the remnants of Stalinism, rejecting the corrupting divisions of capitalism, and recapturing the daring and imagination of the revolutionaries of the early 20^th Century. In this respect black and red are not dead. To be socially effective requires lucidity, courage, and hope. Serge would also remind us not to lose sight of the irrepressible human impulse for freedom, dignity and autonomy.

• Part 11, Chapter 4 : Beyond the Rainbow: Overcoming Dogma and Confusion in the Articulation of Revolutionary Theory and Practice

Beyond the Rainbow: Overcoming Dogma and Confusion in the Articulation of Revolutionary Theory and Practice

Larry Portis

Overcoming Dogma and Confusion in Revolutionary Theory and Practice: Red and Black in Historical Perspective

A central question in contemporary revolutionary thinking is how to draw the best from past experience while overcoming political reflexes tied to debates that no longer (or should no longer) exist. Historical knowledge is absolutely necessary for informed thinking and acting, but partial historical understanding can perpetuate doctrinal disputes that further limit and rigidify perspectives. At the same time, partial knowledge of individual motivations— especially our own—can amplify the effects of the ignorance and confusion in which everyone participates in some way.

From this perspective, it is necessary to confront the motive bases of dogma and confusion. By dogma I mean defined and received certainties that are often founded in personal insecurities but projected onto perceived adversaries or heretics. Confusion may be best defined as misunderstandings that arise from either lack of knowledge or understanding, and that tend to be reinforced by individual interests and their conscious or unconscious defense. The history of the “Red and Black”[568] current of political praxis—theory and practice—is perhaps the best example of how dogma and confusion have limited the effectiveness of revolutionary struggle since the mid-nineteenth century.

The “Red and Black” refers to a revolutionary political current or tendency defined in relation to what is generally taken to be, on the one hand, “Marxism” and, on the other, “anarchism.” And here is much of the problem: a supposed conflict between two doctrinal tendencies has largely hidden from view the existence of an alternative current that has attempted to draw upon all expressions of transcendent social philosophy and action. There is, indeed, a fundamental division of the revolutionary movement, but it is a division that exists artificially in that it has been willed into existence and has obstructed perception and knowledge of alternatives. There is, in fact, no reason to juxtapose in a binary way what Red and Black represent. In reality, there is no implicit contradiction in a nuanced synthesis of the most directly democratic and egalitarian ideas and practices called into existence by opposition to the industrial capitalist system.

Historical origins

This division of the revolutionary left into “Marxist” and “anarchist” camps might be called the “Great Misunderstanding.” As it is well known, the idea and reality of such a division emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century, splitting the movement calling for a free, egalitarian social relations into two parts, each with its own symbols, hallowed texts and authority figures. The backdrop of this antagonism—called the “Great Schism” by James Joll—long preceded the clash between the “Marxists” and the “Bakuninists” in the early 1870s. The political strife manifest during the establishment of the First International Working Men’s Association was perhaps an inevitable development rooted in the multifaceted reaction against the growth of industrial capitalism that is most largely conceived of within the context of the Romantic Movement.

In other words, it was the “humanistic” rejection, on both emotional and intellectual grounds, of the de-humanizing civilization and mentalities produced by capitalist social relations that most fundamentally gave rise to modern revolutionary movements. Such activity expressed a will to go beyond existing social and mental structures towards those that would somehow liberate human creative potential and facilitate the “pursuit of human happiness.” In North America, for example, this general movement was rightly called “transcendentalist.”

To “transcend,” to accede to a qualitatively different state of being, is to realize revolutionary change. Throughout the nineteenth century, the social revolutionary dimension of this impulse became progressively more evident, and it was given inspiration and formulation by thinkers of the European Enlightenment of the previous century—Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, William Godwin, G.W.F. Hegel and others. However, ideas are one thing, and the realization of them is another. Attempts to realize—to create— free and equal social relations on a practical basis raise the most difficult questions of all.

The split between the Red and the Black is generally expressed as a disagreement over method, over the political strategy needed to accomplish the real transcendence of the capitalist system of production and the social relations necessary to it. To go beyond the localized experiments in communal living and working that were rightly (if derisively) called by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels “utopian socialism”[569] implied the destruction of “actually existing” capitalism.

Genesis and evolution of the Great Misunderstanding

The thinkers at the origins of the Red and Black agreed as to the ultimate expression of transcendence of the capitalist mode of production and its corresponding civilization. But the way of transcendence was the problem. Even then, however, when Marx and Engels spoke of the “dictatorship” of the proletariat, it was not because they approved dictatorship as a mode of political governance or social control; it was rather to emphasize that the reign of social- class domination must be thoroughly eliminated. When Marx so cruelly ridiculed Pierre- Joseph Proudhon (in the Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy), it was not to say that Proudhon was an agent of the capitalist system, but rather to expose how what he perceived as idealist confusion is a dangerous foundation for an anti-capitalist revolutionary movement.

Still, we know that the conflict was more than this, even if these are its principled, philosophcal bases. If Marx believed that a proletarian revolution would be liberation from wage slavery and class domination, and if he dedicated his life to the struggle for this liberation, it is nevertheless clear that his personality was that of an authoritarian. And it is important to say it because, firstly, his authoritarian cast of mind combined with the perception that working-class revolution was imminent gave rise to the centralized, exclusionary power relations that Marx promoted in the First International. Secondly, in response, Mikhail Bakunin opposed what he called Marx’s “authoritarian communism” with what is, in effect, “libertarian socialism”—the idea that only the creation of autonomous, local administrative bodies can ensure non coercive social relations. For Bakunin, the strategy and tactics of revolutionary struggle must directly, that is to say immediately, contribute to the creation of non-authoritarian social relations.

What is remarkable to me, and I believe it relates fundamentally to our perception of the “red and black” current of revolutionary struggle, is how this split between the so-called “Marxists” and the so-called “Anarchists” has persisted to the present day. “Marxism” continues to be synonymous with authoritarian political practice, not only in the delusion of capitalist ideologists but also in the rhetoric of far-too-many self-proclaimed anarchists. This is the case in spite of the fact that Bakunin repeatedly expressed his greatest admiration for Marx’s analysis of the capitalist system in all its aspects. Bakunin, at least, was an anarchist who knew how to distinguish between theory and practice. But this confusion between the analytical, theoretical corpus of Marx’s intellectual work, on the one hand, and, on the other, his organizational intrigues, created unnecessary, but long-lasting barriers within the revolutionary movement. And the confusion between anti-capitalist analysis and political practice quickly congealed into sectarian ideologies.

There have been many prominent and less-prominent individuals who resisted the red or black dichotomy, and this resistance has been given important organizational expression. The will to transcend invidious notions limiting revolutionary struggle has, for example, been evident in the revolutionary syndicalism and more particularly in the Confederation generale du travail, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo (CNT), in council communism, and in the work of “affinity groups” and “consensus” decision-making within some of the “new social movements,” especially those associated with radical environmental groups and anti “globalization” in general.

More broadly, however, it may be best to think of the history of the “Red and Black”—or “libertarian socialism” or “libertarian communism” or “anarcho-communism”—as a struggle within a struggle. There are two important questions in this regard. The first is: how and why has libertarian socialism taken so long to reach a larger militant public? The second is: what are the possibilities for the development of libertarian socialism in the future?

The acceptance of revolutionary libertarian socialism has been countered by two powerful forces: 1) the idea and reality of the nation state; 2) the idea and practice of authoritarian socialism, defined as political organization adopting hierarchical modes of functioning and decision-making. These latter are most prominently represented by those Leninist ones consequent to the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of the U.S.S.R. Under the reign of Joseph Stalin, the idea of “socialism in one country” even combined, in practice at least, an expression of a kind of nationalism with a particular vision of social and political organization that was called socialism.[570]

However, even before the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, the possibility of appropriating of existing governance by an “avant-guard” political formation and the subsequent exercise of power was a widely held idea. Marxist dogma about the difference between “utopian socialism” and “scientific socialism” reinforced the expectation. By the same token, the debate between the Marists and the Narodniks in Russia in the 1880s tended to valorize the privileging of “objective,” “structural” and, thus, “scientific” factors over the types of human agency privileged by the Russian Populists. In the context of nineteenth- century European culture, the positivistic, “scientistic” character of Marx’s intellectual work (but especially that of those people he so influenced—the “Marxists”) had a distinct advantage over more prosaically practical or common-sensical visions of revolutionary social change. The practical exigencies of class struggle seemed to require rigorous organization and discipline, including a clear hierarchy of leadership. This perception lent force to the more authoritarian mind-set seemingly made necessary by the ferocity of the counter-revolutionary forces.[571]

The dominance of authoritarian socialism lasted precisely one century, from the creation of the Second Socialist International to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. As long as the Soviet Union existed, the Third and Fourth Communist internationals remained powerful machines for recruitment and indoctrination in the pursuit of authoritarian revolutionary socialism.

During this century, there was little debate between the proponents of libertarian and authoritarian revolutionary socialism. The Leninists, like Marx, did not attempt to reason with their opponents on the revolutionary Left, but rather worked to destroy them, to discredit them by any and all means. Even within Leninist parties, the techniques of humiliation, forced submission, exclusion and, if need be, physical modes of “liquidation” were standard operating procedure. Within such a movement, the “humanistic” impulse was bound to become an object of scorn and relegated to the category of “bourgeois” mentality.

Ideals and authoritarian socialism: Dialectics of “Bad Faith”

Historical developments seem to indicate that hierarchical political structures— revolutionary in intent or not—lead to manipulations and forms of social and political domination. Institutionalized, formalized control over others develops that is invidious to the emergence of healthy social relations.

There is a mechanism here that leads to (or contributes to) what Jean-Paul Sartre called la mauvaise foi—that “bad faith” that justifies the use of others for selfish reasons that is masked as altruism. In other words, one’s own self-interested motives are transformed, in one’s own mind, into the most selfless ideals. They are then presented to others in this guise.

“Bad faith” is not peculiar to the capitalist system or to reactionary politics. It is a psychic mechanism of people who, for a variety of reasons, have not learned to pursue their personal projects or to present themselves as individuals openly, without resorting to misrepresentation. Instead of confronting positively inter-personal differences or interests, this personal weakness is compensated for by the manipulation of others.

It is important to understand that the exercise of bad faith cannot be a totally unconscious process. The major distinction here is that conscious deception is more than hypocrisy; it is lying. In contrast, bad faith is situated somewhere between consciously deceitful, calculated deception (lying) on the one hand, and the hypocritical blindness characteristic of narcissistic egoism on the other. As Sartre says, bad faith is a continual vacillation between self-delusion and the terror of understanding and, consequently, self-reproach.[572] It is this uneasiness, this malaise, which reinforces the will to dominate others by any and all means. It is a failure to confront the contradiction between self-interest and professed motivations that produces (or contributes to) the authoritarian pathologies that can be associated with Leninism.[573]

From a phenomenological or psychoanalytical perspective, therefore, we are in the presence of political mechanism produced by the psychic consequences of hierarchical social relations, those inherent in both feudal and capitalist systems. But this type of character formation has the effect of reinforcing non-egalitarian social relations. Character weaknesses and emotional immaturity, involving low self-esteem, passivity and submissiveness to authority, even when compensated for by rebellious poses and attitudes, can lie behind authoritarian casts of mind.

The political consequences of character and personality formation can be a serious problem in political activity and decision-making. Subjectively, and within a “progressive” milieu, the desire to democratize social relations is often used as a means to dominate other people in order to liberate them. Objectively (or “sociologically”) speaking, however, the effect is to replicate the existing social relations necessary to the perpetuation of domination and exploitation.

Again, it must be insisted that, on the revolutionary political Left, this will to dominate is rarely cynical. Rather, it is explained to the self as well as to others as necessary in the pursuit of a social ideal. But it is a psychic house of cards that is fragile. Bad faith is in continual danger of self-revelation, which is why any attempt to call attention to its weaknesses brings forth the most violent and merciless retaliation. So dominant was this paranoid, desperate and arrogant mindset on the revolutionary political Left that many involved with libertarian socialism have been, also, seriously afflicted by it.

Towards a reassertion of a “Red and Black” revolutionary praxis

After one century of enormous influence over the expression of revolutionary thought and practice in the western industrial capitalist countries, the dominance of authoritarian socialism no longer exists. And this is why the potential for the “Red and Black,” for libertarian socialism, is now greater than ever.

Over the past several decades, the once strong Communist parties have largely collapsed, and support for other Marxist-Leninist organizations has also dramatically dwindled. In contrast, it is true that, for more than thirty years, the most dynamic critique of capitalism has been, in some way—Green. We have come to understand that environmental destruction is an inescapable sign of the humanly dysfunctional essence of the capitalist system. But the limitations of the environmental, anti-corporate movement are also manifest, and it seems equally clear that environmentalism, as a reform program, is no solution to the problem posed by the capitalist system of production.

What is needed is a generalized recognition of how a non-authoritarian, anti-capitalist perspective has developed over the past century and a half, and how it can offer a solution to the class-based, short-sighted logic inherent in capitalist production. This is the analysis and world view—that drawing from the works of all revolutionary writers and actors who have elucidated and combated this system—that must now be presented as the revolutionary position most capable of inspiring real democratic—libertarian and egalitarian—change. The history and contemporary relevance of this understanding, this existing tradition, must rise out of obscurity, out of the recesses of revolutionary theory and practice, and be shown to be the most ethnically coherent, analytically refined, and socially healthy orientation produced by resistance to the rise and decline of the capitalist system.

This is what we must refer to, but to whom should we refer? We all have contributions to make to this historic task. And we all have ideas about who has been important in the elaboration of libertarian socialism. My experience, partial as it is, has led me to some consider what I believe are important experiences or figures in this movement. Here are a few of them.

First on my short list is William Morris, because his appropriation and active propagation of both Marxian analysis and libertarian principles, on the one hand, and his integration of esthetic concerns and environmentalist sensitivities is more than relevant to contemporary conditions. Morris’ focus on how industrialism capitalism devastated the human habitat for the vast majority of people, and how that devastation contributes to the destruction of human spirituality is, perhaps, a contribution that is far-too-neglected. And it is one that needs greater elaboration. In addition, in my opinion, Morris’ News from Nowhere, for example, breaks down the invidious distinction between “utopian” and “scientific” socialist perspectives.

Next, my reading of Georges Sorel has convinced me that his contribution to anticapitalist thinking has either been misunderstood or consciously maligned, and that his place in the evolution of the Red and Black is essential. Sorel was one of the earliest to insist, like Marx himself, that there was little in common between Marxian ideas and Marxist dogma, at least concerning revolutionary philosophy. This perception caused him to be one of the first to explore the complex philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of Marx’s thought. But it was an effort eclipsed both by slanderous interpretation on the part of capitalist ideologists and by the Bolshevik revolution and its lamentable effect on revolutionary thought in general.

Most importantly, For Georges Sorel, as for William Morris, the object of revolutionary struggle is, or should be, the engendering of values—morality in this sense—that contribute to the acceptance of social solidarity and individual creativity. Egalitarian revolution means overcoming the deference towards authority generated by hierarchy and social-class domination. It means liberation in the Wilhelm-Reichian sense, of a society of psychically free individuals, tolerant of others, recognizing their own limitations, and yet confident in their own creative potential.

This stress on the Revolution as a moral transformation—one that forges values through political struggle—can easily be derided as “bourgeois humanism”—which is perhaps why Goerge Orwell referred to “bourgeois morality” as “common decency,” or why C.L.R. James placed high value on a “sense of fair play.” Orwell understood that the epithet “bourgeois” is simply part of that totalitarian cant that must be exposed as such.

Another major example of the transcendence of the Great Misunderstanding in the evolution of revolutionary theory and practice is the experience of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). There must be a reason (and there is) why the I.W.W. continues to enjoy the admiration, even the adulation, of revolutionaries coming from both the libertarian and authoritarian ranks. But what is particularly striking is how so many disillusioned people from Leninist backgrounds became (and have become) nostalgic about the actions, the organization and especially the spirit of the famous Wobblies.[574]

There are many important examples of this passage from authoritarian to libertarian socialism: Victor Serge, Daniel Guerin, Daniel Anselme, Clancy Segal. And there are many people who always seemed to have avoided the Great Misunderstanding, such as Franklin and Penelope Rosemont, Georges Fontenis, Rene Lefeuve...

It seems clear to me that both Leninist and reformist socialism have reached a dead end, that they are in a state of complete decomposition. One indication is that there are now Marxist mandarins, still enjoying the advantages of political and publishing networks, who are attempting to shift towards the libertarian left, but without joining what they call the “ultra-left.”

The problem is that “Red and Black”—revolutionary, libertarian socialism, anarcho- communism—is the “ultra-Left.” To make the shift—this political transition, means abandoning the habit of intellectual domination and the smearing of opponents. It means becoming aware of how this elitist approach to knowledge and its uses—that cultivated especially in universities and political parties—is destructive of real political consciousness and of individual creativity. It means breaking with the idolatry proper to movements based on the faith inspired by the cult of the leader—whether Marx or Lenin or Trotsky or Mao or Che Guevara or Bakunin or Durruti.

This is the meaning and the promise of the Red and Black. These, the only revolutionary elements of Marxian and Anarchist thinking and practice, cannot be dead, because the capitalist system engenders their very existence.

• Part 12, Chapter 1 : Geography Against Capitalism

Cartographies of resistance

Geography Against Capitalism

Alberto Toscano

Not Available.

• Part 12, Chapter 3 : Autonomy, Self-Organization, and the Spatial Composition of the Social Imaginary

Autonomy, Self-Organization, and the Spatial Composition of the Social Imaginary

Stevphen Shukaitis

Not Available.

• Part 13, Chapter 1 : Autogestion et dictature du prolétariat

Marx and the Anarchists

Autogestion et dictature du prolétariat

Matthijs Gardenier

Not Available.

• Part 13, Chapter 2 : ‘Un Marx libertaire? Dictature du Prolétariat chez Marx

‘Un Marx libertaire? Dictature du Prolétariat chez Marx

Nicolas Bressy

Not Available.

• Part 14, Chapter 1 : Beyond ‘Red’ and ‘Black’: Publishing in the pursuit of libertarian socialism

Convergence Through Practice 3: Publishing

Beyond ‘Red’ and ‘Black’: Publishing in the pursuit of libertarian socialism

Jean Michel Kay

The history of a political current can never be reduced to that of its organizations or to the study of its doctrine, unless it has never had the least influence outside itself. On the other hand, it is difficult to identify such a current when it has not built any permanent organization and has not produced a body of doctrine. Nonetheless, it is the surmise of such a current that we beg to offer as a research topic based on the story of an activist publisher from the 1930s on.

What is surmised here is that at certain periods of French contemporary social history, and probably elsewhere in Europe, a political current has sprung up that overcomes the historical deadlock between the protagonists of “State socialism” and those of “socialism without a State.” This current has not given birth to permanent political organizations; it has not spawned recognized theoreticians, it has not spelt out a formal doctrine. The reason that suggests itself for those three negatives is that this current has only emerged in periods of social upheaval and has generally lacked time to create a lasting political vehicle, and that the theory of what it stood for could only develop after the event.

As shorthand, we will designate this current as “libertarian socialism.” This label has no historical legitimacy; it has been used by Daniel Guerin as cover title of his first collection of essays aimed at reconciling those he called “twin brothers, feuding brothers.”[575] In later editions, he has changed it to “libertarian Marxism,” and then to “libertarian communism.” But at the time when we surmise that libertarian socialism first materialized, libertarian communism was claimed as their objectives by the Spanish CNT and FAI, and they are clearly different.

We propose to search for that current through the enduring story of an unusual publishing house, which has carried on for fifty years thanks to the exertion of one individual, Rene Lefeuvre, and which has outlived him. The features of that publishing endeavor — the Cahiers Spartacus — qualify it as an appropriate tool for identifying that current and turning it into a legitimate research topic:

• It is an activist publishing house, i.e. one that pursues specific political goals.

• It is not-for-profit, and has no other concern than to publish whatever it feels should be made available to the readership it hopes to reach.

• It is independent, to the extent that it is not controlled by any political organization.

• However, it does not rely on patronage or to any significant extent on donations. Therefore, while it does not need to be profitable in any sense, it can only carry on publishing if there are enough buyers for its output. It has not always been the case.

---

Libertarian socialism as we mean it only materializes as a political current after the October revolution. The lessons it draws from the 1917 revolution and its aftermath differ from those drawn by other anti-Stalinist currents such as the anarchists, the Trotskyists or even the council communists, whose experience was anyway practically unknown in France at the time. Its political assumptions may be summarized as follows:

• The evolution of society can only be grasped through the analysis of class struggles; class antagonisms, crises borne by the ruled can only be eliminated if they wrest political and economic power from the ruling classes and exert it themselves.

• The capitalist State is the instrument of domination of the ruling classes; as such, it has to be dismantled; but as classes will survive even after such dismantlement, and as social activities will need to be organized and decisions made, political institutions will remain necessary at various territorial levels.

• The nation is the framework of bourgeois power; it is not suitable for building socialism; libertarian socialism is internationalist by nature.

• Libertarian socialists know that trade unions have become institutions of capitalist society; they find however that in many instances taking part in union activity is the first means at the disposal of workers to take part in collective action and the class struggle.

• Political parties are necessary to formulate analyzes and proposals, to gather means for education and action; but no party can claim a monopoly of power:

“The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be implemented by a single sector of the proletariat, only by all sectors, without exception. No workers’ party, no trade union can exert any dictatorship.”[576]

Lastly, libertarian socialists do not view taking part, or not taking part, in the electoral process and discharging elective duties as a matter of principle. But for them, for any party coalition to obtain and retain government power through the electoral process cannot be a goal in itself.

An activist publisher

At the request of his father, a master stone mason in a village in Brittany, Rene Lefeuvre also becomes a stone mason. But rural life does not suit him. Although with only primary schooling, he’s an assiduous and inquisitive reader. At 20, when called up for military service, he manages to be quartered in the Paris area, where, but for the war years, he will live from 1922 to his death in 1988.

By what he has learned of it, and in spite of the repulsive picture drawn of it by the conservative opinion leaders in his home region, he is attracted by the Russian revolution and the achievements of the Soviet Union. He reads Boris Souvarine’s Bulletin communiste, which reports on them but will not hide the disputes that are starting to divide the Executive of the International, of which he is a member, and the leadership of the Soviet Communist party. Boris Souvarine’s exclusion of the French communist party, of which he had been a founding member, and Souvarine’s maturing understanding of the class nature of the Soviet regime will contribute to Rene’s strengthening political beliefs: availing himself of the notions of classes and exploitation as developed by Marx, Souvarine asserts in the late 1920s that a new ruling, exploitative, class is being created in the Soviet Union through its control of the State. He also rejects what he sees as the invention by the Soviet leadership of a Leninist doctrine. Lastly, he also rejects what he perceives in Trotsky — whose right to hold dissenting views he had supported in the Executive of the International — as a commitment to reproduce the analyzes and behavior of the Soviet Communist party.[577] Rene attends some of the meetings of the Cercle communiste Marx et Lenine launched by Boris Souvarine in 1926 with other members or former members of the CP opposition. In 1930, it becomes the Cercle communiste democratique, whose purpose is to “uphold, continue and invigorate the democratic and revolutionary tradition of Marxism” and to “actively seek the seeds of the renewal of revolutionary thought and action.” Its manifesto expands on the theme: “Together with Marx and Engels ,the Cercle declares itself democratic, by which it means to restore against fake communists, who negate it, and fake socialists, who debase it, a notion which is inseparable from the revolutionary idea. Communists and socialists of the Marxist school have in politics long simply called themselves ‘democrats’ before calling their party ‘social- democrat .’ The Marxist critique of the implementation of the democratic principle in capitalist society is directed to the contradictions of its practice, not to the principle itself, and makes the point that it is impossible to achieve true political democracy without the foundation of economic equality.”[578]

Until 1928, Rene earns a living as a stone mason craftsman. Then, thanks to distance learning courses he had taken up when in Brittany, he is hired as a clerk in a claddings firm, which frees some of his time to pursue other interests. This is when he joins the Amis de Monde, and becomes their secretary. Launched in 1928 by Henri Barbusse, a Communist party member since 1923, Monde[579] sought to be “a weekly publication, reporting major literary, artistic, scientific, economic and social information to provide an objective picture of current affairs.” But its launch reflects a disagreement between Henri Barbusse and the Communist International of the third period, in which the social-democrat, now dubbed “social-fascist,” has become the main opponent. In 1926, the International had requested Henri Barbusse to launch an international body of revolutionary writers. As this would have only brought together Communist party members, or writers already close to the Party, Barbusse has chosen instead to create “a hive of publications” — much more than a newspaper — aiming at a “world gathering of intellectuals.”[580] Contributors to Monde will therefore include Communist writers, some of them writing from the Soviet Union, but also former Communists and even Socialists, for which Monde will be condemned at the second congress of revolutionary writers held in Kharkov in November 1930. Monde is charged with being “a paper without guiding principles, which from the start has taken an anti-Marxist position,” of being distinctive by “ its confusionism,” of harboring contributors who are “Trotskyist agents, social-fascists, bourgeois radicals, pacifists,” in short with being hostile to proletarian ideology. It is worth mentioning that back in April 1930, Pierre Naville, Trotskyism’s first official representative in France, had taxed Monde in his Lutte de classes with being a “collection of garbage from the most swampy, the most confused, and in the end the most anti-proletarian output of petty-bourgeois politico-literary circles’’

Monde is clearly not a Communist party paper, although Henri Barbusse would not condone attacks against the Soviet regime. The Amis de Monde are assigned ambitious goals: not only should they support the paper’s sales, but they should also contribute news and reports to it. In 1930, when Rene Lefeuvre becomes their secretary, the membership numbers about 800. Lucien Laurat,[581] who belongs to Monde’s editorial team, has organized a political economy study group, which in particular studies Marx’s Capital. As the Amis are keen that other groups, on other topics, be set up, Rene will dedicate himself to the task to the full. Always eager to learn, he is also devoted to the transmission of knowledge, to popular education which will always remain the true aim of his publishing. New study groups are set up: for social studies, workers’ movement history, architecture, Esperanto; also a drama troupe. Rene also organizes movie screenings, visits to exhibitions.

After two years, members of the study groups are asking for a means regularly to publish the outcome of their work. Rene is put in charge of that venture. He suggests Spartacus as title of this new paper: members choose Masses, a reference to the American New Masses.

At first, Masses’outlook could not be significantly different from that of Monde and the manifesto published in its first issue, dated January 1933, states in particular that “a revolutionary culture is opposed to bourgeois culture. In the great struggle, such a culture is a weapon”; and also that “against bourgeois calumnies, we will defend the Soviet Union’s exertion to build a classless society by setting truth against lies’”

Events will make Masses partly change its editorial course. This first issue does indeed include features on architecture, sociology, the theater, and on workers’ unity. In the second issue, there’s also a piece from Rustico[582] in which he reports on the activity and state of mind of the Berlin Communists he has joined in October 1932 in expectation of a decisive showdown in Germany between reactionary forces and the masses. The third issue, dated March 1933, pays tribute to Karl Marx for the fiftieth anniversary of his death, with, among other items, the beginning of a summary of the main thesis of Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of capital. Masses is a 20-page monthly, of medium format, with a fairly sophisticated layout and some pictures, particular care being lavished on the front cover.

Contributors to Masses are in their great majority young members of the study groups. But the editorial staff will quickly change: in May 1933, Masses briefly quotes an announcement from the Cercle communiste democratique that Victor Serge, who had been living in the Soviet Union since 1919, had been arrested. He was among the writers who supported Monde. In July, Masses publishes a letter from Victor Serge in which he spells out the principles of his opposition to the regime. Rene Lefeuvre requests “that authorized sources inform the Western proletariat of the reasons which justify Victor Serge’s punishment and why he has been refused for so many years the passport he needs to leave Russia.’” Compared for instance to what the Cercle communiste democratique was writing at the time, this is very moderate indeed. The same issue includes a new report from Rustico, on those events in Berlin which, from January to March 1933, have led to the Nazis’ victory, the outlawing of the Communist party and the repression of its members. Masses does not publish the letters in which Rustico takes to task the leaderships of the Communist party and of the International. Nevertheless, this is more than those contributors to Masses who are Communist party members can take. In a communique published by YHumanite, the Party daily, they question the stand taken by Masses in favor of Victor Serge, against, according to them, the opinion of the editorial board, and also the “controversy about events in Germany’ and warn readers “that the Masses periodical is bound to become a tool in the hands of counterrevolutionaries.” They will be made to leave the editorial board.

New contributors make their appearances in the next issues. They are former members of the Left opposition of the Communist party, some of them quite experienced, like Marcel Body.[583] And as Masses had initiated an inquiry on German fascism, Kurt Landau gives his opinion, as do spokesmen for the SAP and for German communist workers groups, heirs to council communists. Masses is much less a product of the study groups, and more of a meeting place for activists looking for answers to the challenges of the times. Current affairs, including debates within the SFIO (the French socialist party), and theoretical insights take pride of place. In January 1934 — the fifteenth anniversary — Masses publishes Rosa Luxemburg’s last newspaper piece and Karl Liebknecht’s last speech. In May 1934, as it had done for German fascism, the editorial board launches an inquiry on the dictatorship of the proletariat and democracy, with an excerpt from Rosa Luxemburg’s The Russian revolution as a primer. Amilcare Rossi’s[584] contribution to that debate is published in the next issue, the 18^th, in June 1934. But other contributions, if they have ever been written, will not be published: in issue number 19, which is the last, it is announced that they will be the material of a special issue, which has never appeared.

Rene Lefeuvre has had to discontinue Masses because, having lost his job, he can no longer meet its costs. The Amis de Monde have suffered from the split between Communists and opponents. Monde itself, initially flourishing in its first two years, now faces difficult circumstances. In addition, Rene is now committed to a new environment: in August 1934, with other contributors to Masses, he has joined the Socialist party.

It is at first sight surprising that revolutionaries, steeped in Marxism, should join such a party, with a significant industrial worker membership in only a few parts of France, and focused primarily on elections. But the SFIO has experienced a number of shocks over the past few months: it has renounced its alliance with the Radicals, who now participate in a government of National union. Its right wing has been expelled, but the debate it had started on the subject of planning has led the Party to consider an action program. Its left wing, the Bataille socialiste, led par Jean Zyromski and Marceau Pivert and in favor of joint action with the Communists, has lost the out-and-out pacifists among its supporters. Feeling it had to race against the fascists, it has started to develop new organizations and new methods: youth movements, uniformed self-defense units, action groups, new propaganda media. Also, Trotsky has ordered his French followers, the Bolshevik-Leninists, to join the SFIO, which they do this same month of August 1934.

But it is the bloody events of February 1934 and their aftermath that have convinced Rene and his comrades to join the socialist organization. On the morning of 6 February, the day of the right-wing anti-parliamentarian demonstration, Marcel Cachin was writing in the Humanite: “One cannot struggle against fascism without struggling also against social-democracy.” If, on 12 February, left-wing activists had gone on strike and demonstrated jointly, it was not due to the national leaderships of the parties. The Bataille socialiste, for its part, is clearly in favor of joint action. In May 1934, the Communist International changes tack and declares in favor of a united front with the Socialists. On 27 July, an agreement is signed by the two parties. Aime Patri,[585] in the last issue of Masses, may be mistaken about the reasons of this change when he writes: “It is the French working class, by demonstrating spontaneously and through its deeds that it aspires to unity, which has obliged the Communist International as well as the French section of the Labor and Socialist International to act accordingly.” However, for the activists, there is now a real prospect of efficient action on the ground, in joint committees.

In putting together Masses, Rene Lefeuvre had been trained in publishing techniques by the typesetters, and he was now able to earn a living also as a proof-reader. In December 1934, with members of the last team at Masses, he launches a new weekly: Spartacus, for revolutionary culture and mass action. It is said in its first issue that Masses will continue, but only as special issues. The

first of those specials — indeed, the only one — is a brochure on the Berlin Commune of 1918–1919, the work of Andre[586] and Dori Prudhommeaux. It is made up mainly of the League Spartacus’ program and of Rosa Luxemburg’s speech on that program. For Rene, it is of primary import to disseminate the political writings of Rosa Luxemburg, which have not been widely translated and published in France. This concern is clearly apparent in pieces which are published in Spartacus.

Andre Prudhommeaux, briefly a Communist party member, had been active in 1929–1930 in the “Groupes ouvriers communistes,” inspired by German council communism, entertaining a relationship with Karl Korsch and rejecting the Leninist view of the party. He had been to Germany and had brought back documents. In 1930, his Librairie ouvriere, in Paris, had published as a brochure a French translation of Herman Gorter’s 1920 Open letter to Comrade Lenin in which he objected to the tactics foisted upon Western communist parties by the new International. In 1933, he is one of the French organizers of the committee for the defense of Marinus Van der Lubbe, who had set fire to the Reichstag. The collapse of the German workers’ movement makes him reject Marxism and become an anarchist. From1936, he is very active in defense of the Spanish revolution, even if he grows critical of the CNT taking part in government. A publisher and printer (based in Nimes, he has launched a printing co-op) as well as an activist, he provides Rene with material and practical advice, and sometimes loses his temper when Rene appears to be too slow in making use of both.

Spartacus won’t last as a weekly; in April 1935, the masthead of issue number eight recognizes that it is at best a monthly. The last issue, the tenth, is published in September 1935. It has only four pages and is dedicated to the matter of the exclusion of the Trotskyists from the Socialist Youth, to which it objects and asks instead for the Youth to be made autonomous from the national party leadership.

In May 1935, France and the Soviet Union enter into a pact of mutual assistance. Stalin “understands and fully approves the policy of national defense pursued by France’’”. The Communist party quickly falls in line with the new policy of the International and reclaims the Tricolor and the Marseillaise. The prospect of a new Union sacree which, in 1914, has being instrumental in sending the people to the slaughterhouse, looms again.

This new political scene deepens the ongoing disputes within the Bataille socialiste. About unity with the Communist party, about national defense, about activism, Zyromski and Pivert differ significantly: Pivert is against a potential merger with the Communist party; he rejects national defense in a capitalist society. In October 1935, Marceau Pivert seeks to unite left-wing groups within the SFIO and launches the Gauche revolutionnaire, which is defined by what it opposes and by a prospect — that of the socialist revolution — more than by a doctrine, which is yet to be developed. It merges a number of small groups, among them revolutionary socialists who had been expelled from the SFIO because they were in favor of joint action with the Communist party, the group around Spartacus, and also former Communists. Above all, it attracts the younger, more active members of the SFIO.

This new tendency is going to publish a monthly bulletin of the same name, La gauche revolutionnaire, and Rene Lefeuvre is put in charge of it. He is also in charge of the trade union column, at the very time when the CGT is reunited.

Rene has sought to resurrect Masses by replacing items about internal party matters in La gauche revolutionnaire by pieces about doctrine or the history of the workers’ movement, but this has been received unfavorably by some of the readers. Back in 1934, he had defined a publishing program aiming at “providing the proletarian masses with ideological weapons and prepare them for the struggle in all areas” : a periodical like Masses, but issued more frequently, providing more reports on daily struggles and more attractive in layout; brochures in which current issues would be dealt with in more depth; and brochures of revolutionary history. It is to the second leg of this program that he will henceforth devote himself. Not only urgent needs have to be addressed, but the Librairie du travail,[587] the publisher which, for the past twenty years, has been an anchor to revolutionaries, is in dire straits. It will cease to publish in 1937.

The subject matter of these brochures, the Cahiers Spartacus, sub-titled “new series,” is indeed of some urgency: reports on the soviet regime, the prospect of a new World war, the support to be provided to the Spanish revolution.

The first Cahier Spartacus, published in October 1936, bears as cover title 16 fusilles, and Ou va la revolution russe? as sub-title. It mainly consists of writings by Victor Serge, who has been freed at last and has returned to France during the summer. In the first of them, he reports on the most spectacular of the Moscow show trials, which had led to the execution of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov and other Bolshevik leaders. Two other writers contribute pieces against France’s policy of “non- intervention” in Spain, in particular against the government’s refusal to supply weapons to the Republicans. The next brochure, in November, has as its title “Union sacree 1914 — 193...”. It consists mainly in excerpts from Alfred Rosmer’s essential Le mouvement ouvrier pendant la guerre, which has just been published by the Librairie du Travail. Also included are pieces on trade union unity and collectivizations in Spain, reproduced from L ’Espagne socialiste, the French — language paper of the POUM, to which la Gauche revolutionnaire feels close; and also brief reviews of Souvarine’s Staline, un apergu historique du bolchevisme and of Trotsky’s La revolution trahie. The following month, under cover of the Cahiers Spartacus, is a brochure by Jean Prader,[588] Au secours de I’Espagne socialiste, also published by the Librairie du Travail. Rene Lefeuvre has added to it the authorization he has received from Marceau Pivert, as Prader criticizes the Gauche revolutionnaire‘s stand on the matter of arms supply, and also a warning call signed by Julian Gorkin, of the POUM’s international secretariat, about the crimes that the Stalinists are about to commit in Spain. In his brochure, Prader not only discusses the pros and cons of the policy of “ nonintervention” and gives his own views; he also deals in painful detail with the question of how are revolutionaries to respond should war break out, a conundrum that is going to undermine them during the next few years.

The next brochure is the first French edition since 1922 of Rosa Luxemburg’s The Russian revolution in a new translation by Marcel Ollivier.[589] Next will come the Gauche revolutionnaire’s program and its response to the threat of dissolution it faces from the Party leadership, and, in March 1937, the writings on revolutionary Catalonia published at the same time by Andre Prudhommeaux in his Cahiers de Terre libre: a report by Andre and Dori Prudhommeaux on the arming of the people in the Spanish revolution and their translation of Was sinddie CNTund die FAI?, written by the DAS Gruppe in Barcelona to try and counter Stalinist propaganda in the workers’ movement. In June, the Cahiers Spartacus release, under the title Le Guepeou en Espagne, Marcel Ollivier’s report on the May 1937 events in Barcelona. By November 1938, Rene will have published fifteen such brochures.

Until then, Rene Lefeuvre and his comrades had practically never met the anarchists and their doctrines. Rosa Luxemburg, in her pre-war writings, had nothing but harsh words for them. Rene had found them hard to fathom; their groups were fairly closed. It is the recognition of the committees of the CNT’s leading role in the early months of the Spanish revolution and the necessities of international revolutionary solidarity which made Rene distribute those writings. In 1938, he will distribute another Cahier de Terre libre, a collection of Camillo Berneri’s Spanish writings.

Growing disagreements between the majority of the SFIO and the Gauche revolutionnaire led to the dissolution of the latter in April 1937. Rene then took charge of the Cahiers rouges, the new monthly of what was henceforth an unofficial tendency. At the Royan congress, in June 1938, the tendency’s leaders resolve to leave the SFIO and launch the Parti socialiste ouvrier etpaysan (PSOP). For Rene, and he’s not alone, this is an admission of failure, as the new party only attracts a minority of the erstwhile supporters of the Gauche revolutionnaire, whose influence was still growing. The PUP[590] having joined the SFIO after the 1936 parliamentary elections, the PSOP becomes the French member of the International Bureau for Revolutionary Socialist Unity. In September 1938, the Bureau launches the International Workers Front against the War, which advocates a policy of revolutionary defeatism. But, as Prader had remarked in an issue of Spartacus, this policy, which Lenin had been promoting in the First World War, does not prevent war.

Rene Lefeuvre is in charge of the PSOP’s weekly, Juin 36. In January 1939, he starts a new Masses, of which three issues will be published.

At the time of mobilization, and in spite of having being sentenced to six months in jail because of his role in the PSOP, he is called up. He will be taken prisoner and as such will spend five years in Germany.

The trap of anti-sovietism

When back in France in June 1945, Rene Lefeuvre has to adapt to a political landscape that has of course undergone significant changes. The PSOP has sunk without traces during the war. The Communist party has now been in a coalition government for a year, and it will remain in it for another two years. The movements born in the Resistance and which, from various standpoints, advocated a “revolution,” meaning the advent of a society making a clear break with the defunct IIIrd Republic on the basis of the popular alliances built during the war, have to make way for the political parties. Those have but one goal: to restore as quickly as possible the State’s apparatus, and authority in general. For instance, workers who have taken charge of their firms receive no support from any of them.[591]

Thanks to a friend, Rene gets a job in the editorial secretariat of the Populaire, the SFIO’s daily, and then at the Party’s Editions de la Liberte. In January 1946, he starts publishing again on his own account: a new Masses, and the Cahiers Spartacus. He has been able to recover unsold brochures from before the war. Over the next four years, he will add around forty titles to his catalog, from tiny brochures to sizable books. His goal is obvious: to contest the Communist party’s and its daughter organizations’ monopoly of Marxist expression; to supply doubters with the tools of a revolutionary critique of the Russian revolution, the Soviet regime and the Communist party’s politics. Significant publications in this period include writings of Rosa Luxemburg (Questions d’organization de la social-democratie russe, published with other writings under the cover title Marxisme contre dictature, Reforme sociale ou revolution?, Greve generale, parti et syndicats), Anton Ciliga’s Lenine et la Revolution (excerpts from his Ten years in the country of the disconcerting lie, which was published only two years later), Sylvain Wisner’s L ’Algerie dans

I’impasse, which sought to draw attention to the looming crisis in that colony, Ida Mett’s La Commune de Cronstadt,[592] Guy Vinatrel’s L ’URSS concentrationnaire and historical studies by Maurice Dommanget, among which, in 1950, his Sylvain Marechal, 500 pages strong, which cost so much and sold so little at the time that it practically caused Rene to stop publishing.

Masses was meant to be a monthly, but only eleven numbers will be published until its discontinuation in May 1948. Among its contributors are comrades from the first Masses, from Spartacus, from the PSOP, revolutionary syndicalists and members of the left wing of the socialist party, such as Marceau Pivert; there are regular contributions from abroad, among which those of Victor Serge until his death in 1947.

The leading article of the first issue, under the title Socialisme et liberte (which is also the sub-title of the paper) reminds readers that statism and nationalism are enemies of socialism. Starting with the third issue, Masses becomes the mouthpiece of the International movement socialism and liberty, launched by Marceau Pivert and which, according to its manifesto, is grounded in libertarian socialism and revolutionary internationalism. But this movement, with no social basis, will quickly disappear.

Rene and his comrades feel the need to transmit the experience gained at such a high price over the past thirty years. But to whom? In 1946, to judge from party and trade union membership, mass interest is strong, even if the hopes raised at the time of the Liberation fade when faced by the hardships of daily life, rationing, spiraling prices and the start of colonial wars. Never had the memberships of the Communist and Socialist parties been so high (the former’s being twice as large as the latter’s), and never will they ever be again. Another gauge of mass interest for social matters, Le Libertaire, the Federation anarchists s weekly, prints up to a 100 000 copies. But the SFIO belongs to the government coalition, it will head it several times in 1946 and 1947. It has no tendency to compare with the pre-war Gauche revolutionnaire. Its members are not for the most part attracted by a project which charts a route totally different from the Party’s, even if it supports them in their hostility to the Communist party. The SFIO is soon caught in a pincer between that party, then the most powerful in France both electorally and socially, and a Gaullist party, the RPF, which is seen as a threat for the parliamentary republic. The opposition between the Soviet Union and the British-American alliance takes center stage in the political debate, and, with it, the Communist party, whose overarching objective is to “prevent a Western coalition which would tilt the balance of power to the disadvantage of the USSR.”[593] The Communist party is setting the terms of the debate for years to come: on the one side (its side), the forces of socialism and progress, the working class, peace; on the other side, all the others (foremost among them the Socialists), the bourgeoisie, imperialism, war.

Those who, between those two poles, try to promote a third way, struggle all the more to get a hearing that “third way” is reminiscent of “third force,” the centrist coalition that now governs the country after the sacking of the Communist ministers. Such an attempt will nonetheless be made.

In November 1947, a number of renowned intellectuals, among which Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and David Rousset have signed with Marceau Pivert and a few socialist MPs an Appeal for a neutral and socialist Europe. David Rousset went further down that road and, in February 1948, with Sartre, some journalists, a few left-wing socialist MPs and trade unionists, launched an appeal for a Rassemblement democratique revolutionnaire (RDR). Its aim is to move beyond the confrontation between the SFIO, a loyal manager of capitalism, and the Communist party, a tool of Soviet foreign policy. The RDR is not a party, Rousset explains: “It is only in the experience and practice of common struggles that the necessary theoretical solutions will be found...The rally...is

the result of an agreement on more limited, more immediate, objectives, which fit more directly the current situation, in what are its limits and urgency.”[594] He is also aware that the RDR is not grounded in the workers’ movement: “A party is also the expression of a social class...Our aim is to unite, at the side of the working class, those elements of the middle classes which are led to struggle by today’s social and economic situation.”[595]

In the first issue of La Gauche, the RDR’s bi-weekly, Sartre calls for “the rally of this country’s men, as consumers and as producers, in neighborhood committees, in village committees, in factory committees...where they will become conscious of their democratic and revolutionary humanism...The first goal of the Democratic Revolutionary Rally is to bind revolutionary claims to the idea of liberty.” This call for “soviets” to be thus created “on tap” in firms, in the towns and in the countryside is repeated in the RDR’s program, which also includes the creation of a democratic revolutionary federation of peoples and a “positive” struggle against the Marshall plan. The RDR attracts a few left-wing socialists, such as Jean Rous and Leon Boutbien, who have contributed to Masses. Jules Moch, the Socialist Home Office minister, an old foe of the left who’s in the process of bloodily crushing the miners’strike in the North, brands them as “Stalinist agents.” For the Communist party, the RDR is “the RPF disguised as a left-wing party,” “an appendage of the SFIO.” For La Verite, the paper of the Parti communiste internationaliste (Trotskyist), it is “an enterprise in confusion .”

After one year, the RDR has established branches throughout the country, with total membership something less than 2,000. In the Manche department, for instance, members publish a paper called Combatproletarien. The RDR has attracted trade unionists who campaign for trade union unity “on a democratic basis.” But it focuses on the organization of grand meetings to promote that Europe which would be independent from both imperialisms and for which it was set-up. In what appears to be a response to the World Peace Congress held in Paris two weeks earlier, it organizes on 30 April 1949 a day of “international resistance to war and dictatorship.” But the support it receives from the SFIO and the CGT-FO is too obvious, some of the speakers at its main meeting are too controversial, for the RDR to capitalize on it. Geopolitics on its own rarely attracts support from exploited classes. Sartre, for his part, had already distanced himself from the RDR, assessing it as anti-communist.

The exposure of the Soviet regime’s bleakest features, even when widely advertised as is the case in 1949 and 1950 with the Kravchenko and Rousset trials, seems to have little impact on the political orientation of working class activists as long as they haven’t directly experienced the consequences of Communist party policies. The war and the Resistance have weakened conservative influences over a new working class generation in areas where they used to be strong, and the case of the Mouvement de liberation du peuple may confirm that hypothesis.

The Ligue ouvriere chretienne is a family self-help charity sponsored by the Roman Catholic church. In 1941, it changes its name to Mouvementpopulaire des familles (MPF).[596] In 1946, its membership is about 150 000 strong. Monde ouvrier, its weekly, prints up to 200 000 copies. State- financed family support introduced after the war turns it into more of a manager of social services.

A good number of its activists are keen to contribute in a more radical manner to the improvement of workers’ lives. In their actions, the reference to the faith fades. In 1948, they actively support striking miners. They also campaign with the Communist party against the Marshall plan.

In 1949, the MPF opens a debate on political action; it widens its membership to technicians and engineers who find it difficult to join trade unions. Recognizing that new orientation, the Church takes away from it the “action catholique ouvriere” label.

In 1950, the MPF changes its name to Mouvement de liberation du peuple (MLP) to publicize its new role. No later than the following year, it splits in roughly two equal parts: some of its members want to focus on popular education (they launch the Mouvement de liberation ouvriere), while the majority of the MLP wants to turn it into an “organized political force,” based on the following principles:

1. The final goal of the Movement is the total fulfillment of Man through the collective advancement of Man based on the sense of History.

1. To achieve that goal, two means: the downfall of the capitalist regime, the setting-up of a classless society.

2. We will contribute to the downfall of the capitalist regime through the class struggle.

3. To reach that classless society, there will be a workers’ revolution, and the Movement has to conduct it (l’animer).

4. In the current period of workers’ resistance, the Movement, while retaining its identity, must operate with all working class forces striving for an authentic revolution, including Communist organizations, even if they stand alone.

Because of the fierceness of social conflict at the time, the MLP’s members were convinced that a revolutionary upheaval was imminent. For them, expression of anti-communism (hostility to the Communist party and to the Soviet Union) is anti-workers. The prospect of a revolutionary rising recedes with the improvement of economic conditions in the early 1950s. In 1953, some of the members will leave to resume the family, union, cultural and social work which was once that of the MPF. Others, asserting that there’s but one party of the working class, the Communist party, will leave the MLP when it will try to chart its own political course.

The MLP then reaches out to the youth and to students, and joins the anti-colonialist struggle. As for other organizations claiming revolutionary socialist intent, the Algerian war will open an opportunity for strong commitment: the MLP, like the Federation communiste libertaire, like the Trotskyist groups, like anti-colonialist socialists, will materially support Algerian nationalists. This involvement, and the condemnation of the Hungarian crackdown in 1956, will distance the MLP from the Communist party. In 1957, it merges with part of the Unionprogressiste, itself an association of the Parti socialiste unitaire and of progressive Christian movements, until then very close to the Communist party, and with the Tendance socialiste revolutionnaire, an offshoot of Trotskyism, to launch the Union de la gauche socialiste (UGS). In 1960, the UGS and the PSA, an anti-colonialist scission of the SFIO will merge with other smaller outfits to create the Parti socialiste unifie (PSU).

The last golden age?

After 1950, Rene Lefeuvre will cease to publish until the end of the 1960s. He has left the SFIO, which is on its way to oblivion. He has kept unsold papers and books. In 1968, Rene, now retired, and supported by the small group operating the Vieille taupe (Old mole) bookshop which sells the writings of non-Leninist Marxist revolutionaries, starts publishing again. The first new Cahier of that age, Ida Mett’s Lepaysan dans la revolution russe, is released in 1969. Over the next ten years, Rene will add about fifty new titles to the Cahiers’ catalog, not including books supplied by other publishers and new editions of past titles. From 1975 to 1979, he will also publish fifteen issues of a periodical called Spartacus, sub-titled “Socialisme et liberte”: the continuity of the editorial project is obvious.

In the aftermath of May 1968 comes a boom in publishing of workers’ movement and revolutionary writings. Revolutionary ideas and history attract the interest of a wider range of social groups and individuals than ever. All major publishers vie to meet this new demand. New, activist, non-for profit publishers also crop up, sometimes for a brief existence, concerned only with contributing to the debate by publishing as quickly as possible writings they deem to be essential. In 1969, for instance, Belibaste releases, among others, Archinov’sMakhnovchtchina, Rosa Luxemburg’s Letters from prison and a collection of documents on the Kronstadt Commune; Champ libre publishes Krouchtchev’s report to the XXth congress of the Soviet Communist party, followed by Lenin’s Testament. Available in the Cahiers Spartacus are Rosa Luxemburg’s major political writings, to the exception of the Crisis of social-democracy. In that same year, the Cahiers Spartacus release again Herman Gorter’s Reponse a Lenine and publish, among others, Louise Kautsky’s Souvenirs sur Rosa Luxemburg. They reissue Karl Kautsky’s Les trois sources du marxisme, with a critique of Lenin’s theory of class consciousness by the comrades of the bookshop.

This abundance of publications about revolutions and revolutionaries will increase in the following years.

At the same time, it seems that it is the groups which claim the Leninist inheritance, and the Communist party foremost among them, that are increasing their memberships the most. Various Trotskyist groups, others claiming to be Maoists, are gaining in visibility and influence, particularly among the young. For Rene Lefeuvre, as was the case twenty years earlier, it is necessary to try and propagate not only the works of the diverse historical strands of non-Leninist socialism, but also viewpoints on current events broadly in continuity with those strands. His achievement will be to gather around this project small groups, and individuals of all ages, who accept a plurality of viewpoints, a diversity of experience, and who have understood that sectarianism is often the product of thought no longer exposed to practice. Events in Poland, the capitalist development in China, the Portuguese revolution of 1974, the findings of collectives on trade union practice or the ways to the abolition of wage earning, will enrich the catalog together with historical studies and works by Karl Marx, Max Stirner or Anton Pannekoek.

Again, who are the intended readers of those publications? It is true that the interest kindled by the resurrection of the idea of revolution explains the general increase in sales of revolution-related books, without their readers necessarily being activists in any way. Because of their singularity, the Cahiers Spartacus indeed face a peculiar phenomenon: anarchists will generally not consider “Marxist” writings, and few, at the time, will recognize the Cahiers as “libertarian.” For Trotskyist tendencies, the Cahiers breed “confusion.” Their more knowledgeable members know that the “Old man” had designated the PSOP as “centrist” and that Rene Lefeuvre had been a member of the SFIO after World War II.

But the groups and individuals who, in that period, offered their writings or support to Rene had a feeling that the reach of his publications was not circumscribed to a hypothetical “council communist” constituency which had never had any influence on social movements in France. It was unthinkable that the mobilization in 1968 of a large part of the French people, in particular of new social categories, and taking new forms, would not spawn new political projects: it was necessary to provide all those who were taking part in that process with as many tools as possible to identify and avoid the traps laid for them by those whose aim was above all to gain and exert power.

This is Alain Guillerm’s[597] purpose in his 1974 foreword to the Marxisme contre dictature brochure of Rosa Luxemburg writings: “...the grand workers’ party that could arise from the merger of the Socialist party, of the PSU, of the CLAS[598] and of other members of the CFDT cannot be anything — let’s say it clearly — but ‘luxemburgist.’ Without a distinctive theory, it can only be either a reformist and conservative party...or an ideological and practical appendage of the Communist party... The comrades who work towards that merger... are fully conscious of that danger. They believe they can counter it by putting forward the rousing rallying call of „ autogestion’ ...The word has taken so many meanings that it has become confusing . For some, it means the management by people of society at every level, the withering of the State and of wage earning, while for others it is only a variety of economic management...leaving Capital and State unchanged.”

Alain Guillerm was probably mistaken about the class nature of the Socialist party. But he was stressing the specific political phenomenon that had emerged in May 1968: the formulation, outside anarchist circles, of a political prospect designated as “self-management.” At the time when he writes his Foreword, an appeal has been launched by well-known union leaders for the convening of “Assizes for socialism” which could result in the birth of a unified self-management socialist (“socialiste autogestionnaire”) movement.

How did that prospect emerge? Outside some anarchist groups, “self-management” used to refer more specifically to the management system that Yugoslavia had introduced for firms after its break with the Soviet Union in 1948, and then by Algeria, in particular for some of its farms, after having gained its independence in 1962. Such self-management “actually existing” in countries where most social activities were controlled by the State did not help to clarify the notion. In France, Autogestion, a periodical launched in France en 1966, is dedicated to surveying its various meanings.

It is the CFDT trade union federation which, as early as 1968, puts forward self-management as a radical, society transforming project. The notion itself may be vague, but its meaning is easy to understand: if socialist revolution becomes once again a prospect for social forces, the CFDT makes it clear that it will oppose the advent of state socialism. It rejects State control of firms and the subordination of trade unions to the State. Its stand is not a product of theorization: in May, the longing for self-management has been much in evidence in a good number of branches and activities, in the economy and in the wider society. In 1970, the CFDT fleshes out this prospect at its congress. It comes out in favor of a democratic socialism resting on three “pillars”: selfmanagement, social ownership of the means of production and exchange, and democratic planning. It does not deny that power has to be wrested from the ruling classes, but it firmly opposes monopoly power by a revolutionary organization. From then on, in the French workers’ movement, a new socialist project, self-management socialism, is joining battle with the old democratic socialism and state socialism. The Communist party, and Leninist revolutionaries of all stripes, are quick to reject what they denounce as a new idealistic or opportunistic deviation. For his part, the PSU will endorse self-management in 1971, but only painfully, by a small majority of its members. In the immediate aftermath of May, its membership, although still minute compared to that of the Communist party, had increased significantly and the PSU had become a battleground for a number of tendencies, some inspired by Trotskyism and several others by Maoism. The self-management socialist majority was mainly united by its rejection of the competing proposals for the construction of a Leninist-type vanguard organization put forward by other tendencies.

If, by 1972, the PSU had reformulated its project as self-management socialism, the Socialist party was also making references to self-management. Later on, the Ligue communiste revolutionnaire, and even the Communist party will also embrace self-management.

The Assizes for socialism will prove an opportunity for nearly half the membership of the PSU to negotiate their entrance in the Socialist party. The rump of the PSU then has to clarify the exact nature of its political project. A minority will demand in vain that self-management socialism be recognized as the project for achieving power of a new, emerging, class within wage-earners; and as facing this new potential ruling class, an emerging exploited class much larger than the industrial working class which it was necessary to help achieve political expression.[599]

As the PSU went on to support the government of the Left, it sunk in irrelevance and folded. As of today, the self-management socialist heirloom is being claimed only by the Alternatifs,[600] with a membership in hundreds, and no clear political project beside anti-liberalism.

Bearers of tradition, or bearers of the future?

Having worked for many years as a proof-reader in newspapers, Rene Lefeuvre was fully acquainted with the workings of the press. In France, the NMPP, a publisher cooperative, was in charge of distributing all papers and magazines throughout the country. Through it, his publications could be found at newsagents,’ much more numerous and more accessible to a popular audience than bookshops. But to benefit from this network, the Cahiers Spartacus have had to maintain the fiction that they were a periodical[601] and meet two requirements: a minimum frequency of eight issues per year, and print runs high enough to supply a significant proportion of all newsagents. To reach the required number of issues, previous publications have had to be repackaged as new; high print runs have meant significant upfront costs and also returned quantities for which handling charges had to be paid.

In 1979, a combination of health trouble and straightened circumstances led Rene to set up a formal collective to help him more and, in due course, to ensure that his publishing endeavor would live on. In the 1980s, new authors were added to the catalog and a number of important titles were published, as for instance a new edition of Anton Pannekoek’s Workers’ councils, the translation of which by ICO had originally been published by Belibaste; under the cover title Trotski, le Staline manque, writings by Willy Huhn analyzing Trotsky’s political project; A la recherche d’un communisme libertaire, a revised collection by Daniel Guerin of his writings in the perspective of the reconciliation of the “twin brothers, feuding brothers”; Larry Portis’ IWWet syndicalisme revolutionnaire aux Etats-Unis, the only book in French dedicated to the history of the wobblies. Altogether, about twenty new titles.

Rene died in 1988, shortly before the breakup of the Soviet empire. This downfall may have rendered the fight against Marxist-Leninist theories and projects less necessary. The Cahiers Spartacus carry on, faithful to the history of their catalog.[602] But their editorial work is not fed anymore by revolutionary attempts in Europe, as had been the case in the 1970s. In France, the publication of writings on social revolution and revolutionaries remains lively. Several dozens of publishers keep them available and add to the list. But for the Cahiers Spartacus, it seems that once again the libertarian socialist current which gave them birth and that legitimates their existence has gone back to sleep. Hence a number of questions, which may be so many research topics:

1. Assuming that the history of the Cahiers Spartacus may be backed by less visible data, such as the internal debates of political organizations and trade unions, could it be:

   • That doctrines of social revolution do not exist before revolutionary crises, but that they are produced by them?

   • Therefore, even if teachings can be drawn from previous revolutionary episodes by those who could live through new ones, that the doctrines themselves will have lost a good deal of their relevance because of the changes wrought into the social structure between episodes?

   • That once the revolutionary wave has broken, the social groups that have ridden it will not necessarily maintain the doctrine which they have formulated during it, either because they are now ensconced in the new power structure and in need of a new doctrine (re. the Bolsheviks) or because the doctrine is of no use outside the revolutionary moment (re. the autogestion generalisee)?

2. Political currents of the workers’ movement have as often as not expressed themselves in writing and their travails are also a subject matter for historians. Is it at all possible to gauge the influence that may have had, or can still have, writings such as those once published by Rene Lefeuvre, or published today by publishers of the social revolution, on their intended readers?

• Part 14, Chapter 2 : Mayday magazine on Red and Black theoretical perspectives

Mayday magazine on Red and Black theoretical perspectives

Trevor Bark

Not available.

• Part 15, Chapter 1 : Beyond the working-class: the politics of the excluded

Ideology and Post-Ideology 2

Beyond the working-class: the politics of the excluded

Andy Robinson

The intersection of “Black and Red” has historically occurred around the common feature of orientation to the working class and related ideas of socialist anti-capitalism. In this paper, I shall argue that the division of the working-class into included and excluded necessitates a new orientation to the excluded. The paper will begin by exploring how the question of the excluded drove a wedge between Bakunin and Marx, before looking at the growth of exclusion today and the types of social movement to which it gives rise. It will attempt to map a ‘politics of the excluded’ to inform the revitalization of anarchism and autonomous neo-Marxism while deepening the insights of Bakunin’s critique of Marx. Bakunin believes that people change their class position by becoming part of the state (excerpt 1) and fears a ‘barrack regime’ coming from the project of regulated reform.

My sense of Bakunin’s relevance today is that, in contrast to Marx’s theory of included workers as vanguard, he called for an orientation to the excluded or ‘rabble,’ the repressed Other of Marx’s category.

In contrast to Marx, Bakunin treated the state as itself a kind of class. “Here, then, is society divided into two categories, if not yet to say two classes, of which one, composed of the immense majority of the citizens, submits freely to the government of its elected leaders, the other, formed of a small number of privileged natures, recognized and accepted as such by the people, and charged by them to govern them.” (Ch. 3). Bakunin refers here to the state- class as such, and treats everyone else as excluded. But one could radicalize this theory with Bologna’s view (in Tribe of Moles) that sections of the included are incorporated into processes of governing. For Bakunin, Marx’s approach, in assuming an enlightened state, necessarily reproduces the division into included and excluded; the state has to be protected from the ignorant and illiterate masses who might destroy everything it achieves (Ch. 3).

State socialism leads only to a ‘bourgeois revolution’ producing a ‘bourgeois socialism’ leading to a ‘new exploitation’ more cunning but no less oppressive than the present (ch. 6) or we might say, a socialism of the included, persisting in the forms of alienated life, failing to eliminate the mechanisms of in-group formation. The antagonism of class against class renders participation by the ‘masses’ or excluded class in ‘the political action of the State’ impossible (Ch. 6).

Notoriously, in his works on colonialism in India, Marx accepts the view that capitalism is a civilizing process. Also of relevance is the Marxist attachment to ideas such as secularism of the state, and compulsory education. For Bakunin such demands subordinate socialism to the program of bourgeois politics. Mazzini and Marx are agreed that proletarian emancipation requires a ‘strongly Centralized state’ which ‘in order to be able to give them education and social welfare, must impose on them... a very strong government’ (Ch. 6). Bakunin thus sees Marx falling into the trap of bourgeois civic republicanism. Hence he ends up favoring the ‘’’intelligent,” respectable... duly bourgeoisified minority of the town proletariat to the detriment of the mass of the proletariat’ (Ch. 6).

Bakunin does not write of included and excluded as such, but of the people, the masses or the working-class. However, Bakunin’s way of constructing this stratum is rather different from Marx’s. The people are taking to be an ‘elemental force sweeping away all obstacles’ (Statism and Anarchy, excerpt 1), capable of ‘total rebellion’ (excerpt 1), a ‘brutal and savage horde’ capable of ‘instinctive, chaotic, and destructive’ insurrection (excerpt 2), a mass and not a class (Ch. 4). An impression is given of radical antagonism, rather than constitution within the existing system.Bakunin argues that Marx privileges the ‘upper layer’ of ‘civilized’ and ‘comfortably off workers, penetrated with bourgeois social prejudices and narrow aspirations, whereas revolutionary potential instead resides in the ‘non-civilized, disinherited, wretched and illiterates’ (Ch. 4). ‘There does not exist in Italy, as in most other European nations, a special category of relatively affluent workers, earning higher wages, boasting of their literary capacities, and so impregnated by a variety of bourgeois prejudices that, excepting income, they differ in no way from the bourgeoisie... Marx speaks disdainfully, but quite unjustly, of this Lumpenproletariat. For in them, and only in them, and not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are there crystallized the entire intelligence and power of the coming Social Revolution.’ (excerpt 2). ‘[T]hat great rabble which being very nearly unpolluted by all bourgeois civilization carries in its heart... all the germs of the Socialism of the future’ (Marxism, Freedom and the State 48). There are strong echoes here of Crisso and Odoteo’s insurrectionist critique of Hardt and Negri, celebrating the rise of the ‘new barbarians’ (Barbarians: The DisorderedInsurgence). The category is taken explicitly to include the so-called ‘peasant “rabble”’ and the subordinate nationalities (excerpt 1). Even against the Mir, the peasant commune, Bakunin upholds the brigand and opposition to authority. He denounces reactive tendencies in the Mir, patriarchy, dominance by adult males, despotism and the absence of horizontal connections between communities (excerpt 3). Similar ideas can be found in some strands of neo-Marxist thought, especially Black Panthers such as Huey Newton, as well as in social movements such as Abahlali and theorists such as Fanon.

The importance of the excluded has an almost psychoanalytical, proto-Deleuzian significance. Bakunin’s thought, unlike Marx’s, has a psychological dimension. Radical antagonism, despair at the present and its intolerability, is crucial. The urge to revolt, or to liberty, is the source of ‘vital power,’ a primordial energy existing in different quantities in each person, varying in intensity, and operating as the source of all emancipations (Ch. 4).

An almost religious belief in one’s rights is the necessary condition for widespread insurrection (excerpt 2). This is reminiscent of Chakrabarty’s (2000) observation that people claim rights before they are subjectified as modern subjects.

[Dipesh Chakrabarty, Keynote Address and Floor Discussion, in WeAsians: Between Past and Present, A Millennium Regional Conference, 21.23 Feb 2000, Singapore: Heritage Society Publication, 2000, 15–41.]

Bakunin’s critique of Marx was based principally on his hostility to the assumption that the workers — particularly the better-off and better-organized workers — would take power and rearrange society to the exclusion of others. As well as fearing the usurpation of workers’ power by false representatives, Bakunin was also concerned that the better-organized workers would try to dictate to those they deemed more ‘backward’ and stupid. The reason for this was partly that Bakunin was worried about herd moralities among these workers, who are too well-integrated into capitalism, too “decent,” and who have too much to lose (psychologically as well as materially) from thoroughgoing social change. Hence their willingness to turn against the “criminals” and the “unruly” elements. The ‘rabble’ stands out as the Bakuninist revolutionary agent because of its difference, the sharpness of its antagonism with capitalism and its separation from the ‘herd.’ To be for “the rabble” is to be against the herd, and vice- versa: to be for the false universality of the herd, of those included in the social “we,” is to be against the rabble and the socially excluded. To be for the rabble is to be a revolutionary. To be for the herd is to be subsumed within a subordinated mass and therefore complicit in one’s own unfreedom.

There is also an epistemological dimension to Bakunin’s critique. Bakunin was an early critic of epistemological privilege, both in the self-perception of the German state as civilizing force, and in the positivism of authors such as Comte. He treats those who seek to encompass social life in science as akin to imposers of religion, and hence prefigures later critiques of essentialism. He is concerned that the epistemological privilege involved in science leads to domination by scientists as a small elite. ‘Give them full power and they will begin by performing on human beings the same experiments that the scientists are now performing on rabbits and dogs’ (excerpt 1). This suggests an early awareness of the risks of the reductive scientific gaze. He also denounces the view that the rise of the despotic state was progressive (Ch. 4), effectively rejecting historical teleology. Bakunin implicitly challenges Marx’s assumption of a link between capitalist development and the possibility of revolution (Marx’s Conspectus).

What is lacking in Bakunin’s work, and leading to risks of authoritarianism, is a distinct social logic pitted against the dominant theory. What is clearest here is what an alternative should not be. The politics of the excluded is implicit, but not strongly defined. Hence, he tends to idealize the actually-existing excluded. Bakunin does seem to assume that concerns about existing mass beliefs are simply prejudices of minorities who wish to rule based on epistemological privilege. One can see here the seeds of another danger, the glorification of oppressive social forms which, by interpreting every ‘commonsensical’ or hegemonic idea as progressive, prevents the emergence of critique. He has not rejected the idea of sacrifice, nor compulsive work, and his vision of destruction is nihilistic. And his approach can be seen in retrospect as prefiguring aspects of leftist anarchism. The danger in this approach is that federations become quasi-parties, political activists become substitute scientists, or the coercion wielded by the state is simply taken up by the community or the federation of communities. These are dangers that have been seen time and again in organisationalist and workerist strands of anarchism, which have often outdone Marxists in reproducing the dangers of Marxism.

Left-anarchism has constructed itself as a subset of a broader ideology, aiming for a seizure of power by the working class and sometimes going as far as to idealize or rationalize reactive prejudices to maintain its fantasy-frame. It has not always been consistent in challenging epistemological privilege, rejecting capitalism and the state but reinforcing hierarchies such as metropolitan-indigenous, included-excluded (against the so-called “anti-social”) and habituated aspects of modernity. As a social function, therefore, it is a radicalized expression of the standpoint of the exploited within the system, thus taking an ambivalent stance towards the system itself. More recently, this has been challenged by post-left anarchy, which offers a deeper critique of the basis of the dominant system and is more sympathetic to more subversive kinds of critique of hierarchy such as mad, children’s, ecological, indigenous, and animal liberation. Post-left anarchy reconstructs anarchism as a theory of the excluded and the autonomous, rather than the included-but-exploited.

Growing exclusion in contemporary capitalism

Exclusion replaces exploitation when the powerful no longer need the poor enough to foster goodwill (Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 76–7)

Contemporary Marxists and anarchists have increasingly conceptualized divisions between included and excluded as central to political struggle against neoliberalism, as power is concentrated in a few core sites, inequalities widen and the included working-class is fenced- off by discourses of employability.

DIRLIK The Local and the Global — capitalism has enough resources that it needn’t control all people, but rather, can simply ignore and exclude four-fifths of the world (54–5)

The formal sector of the economy is shrinking, leaving behind it swathes of social life marginalized from capitalist inclusion. Much of the global periphery is in effect being forcibly ‘delinked’ from the world economy.

Samir Amin refers to a massive extension of pauperization, precarity and social exclusion to the point where over half the global population is now precariously situated, and the precariously situated make up 40% of the center’s popular classes and 80% of the periphery’s (Amin, 2004).

Harvey argues that such exclusion is crucially political: citizenship is restricted to the economically included, and regions are awarded if they display pro-capitalist everyday beliefs (Harvey, 2006: 182, 85).

Moore (2006) shows the importance of selection of workers by criteria of ‘employability,’ which creates a division between included and excluded or marginalized workers. Employability is a political criterion which restricts the entry of workers into the formal workforce based on degrees of conformity.

Watkins similarly argues that the capitalism of ‘information society’ puts the creation of ‘human capital’ or capitalist subjectivity at its greatest ever position in social life (Watkins, 1998: 170–1).

Altvater 2002 — four classes including a fourth, forcibly delinked excluded class (The Growth Obsession, Socialist Register 2002)

‘Sub-Saharan Africa has almost dropped out of the formal international economy’ (Mann, Incoherent Empire, 55–6)

Collapse of policy implementation in much of Africa and replacement with religion, militia and informal econ org (19) — ‘whole regions have now become virtually independent, probably for the foreseeable future, of all central control’ (Bayart, Ellis and Hibou, Criminalization of the State in Africa, 19–20)

In Zambia, formal sector employment as a percentage of the total available labor force has declined from 17 percent in 1992 to 10.4 percent in 1999.

(What Has Happened to Organized Labor in Southern Africa? M. Anne Pitcheral, International Labor and Working-Class History, Vol. 72, No. 1, September 2007)

Works such as Mike Davis’s “Planet of Slums” reveal the emergence of entire lifeworlds shaped by exclusion and marginality.

Gill — global panopticon

Hence an ‘ever-widening gap’ between formal polyarchy and ‘authoritarianism in everyday life deriving from the increasing powerlessness of people to control. the conditions of social life’ (William Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, 376). Robinson refers to a new stratum of ‘supernumeraries’ in countries like Haiti, who are completely marginalized from production (342). The ‘supernumeraries’ have no direct use to capitalism and pose a constant threat of revolt (378).

Poverty as a political choice the world has made — mainly the privileged, by a series of small risk-avoidance decisions and maintenance of a habitus (Pieterse, Globalization or Empire, 813).

Political construction of exclusion

We are witnessing the destruction of liberal democracy as state engage in ever more vicious micro-regulation and social war against minor deviance and nonconformity. The fantasmatic frame of this social war reconstructs citizenship around an ingroup-outgroup binary which forms the core of a social project or frame. It is a regime of gleichschaltung, of top-down coordination of the whole of society by the state, the coordination of social space as if it were a single machine with the state at its head. Hence it is not simply an extension of authoritarian elements within liberal-democracy but entails a direct rejection of the separation of state and society and the idea of a ‘right to have rights.’ Beyond the shifting issues invoked by apologists for repression, there is an overarching principle driving the shift to authoritarianism, an almost totalitarian attitude to everyday life. Its exclusionary discourse has become the ‘touchy nodal point’ of the current regime, the point at which a master- signifier is formed by means of the demonization of a repressed Real.

Discourses of exclusion dehumanize those they label and construct oppressive social relations. By denying the experience of oppression and blocking the capacity to ‘name the world,’ such discourses create a strong discursive asymmetry between included and excluded, creating a situation where the excluded gain voice only through resistance. The in-group’s identity is constructed through Barthesian myths. In Barthesian theory, myths introduce a transcendent element or ‘second-order’ meaning into signs in such a way as to operate outside of immanence, projecting an additional sphere of essential meaning. Hence, paradoxically, it is often what things ‘really are’ in terms of their usual discursive inscription which is mythical, as opposed to how they ‘appear,’ their immanent relationality. In the current field, the included, constructed as a conformist bloc, defines itself as the exclusive locus of ethical value, the only group which matters, and identifies its perspective so exclusively with ‘reality’ that other voices are completely shut out — defining itself, for instance, as having a right not to be disrupted, inconvenienced, ‘alarmed or distressed’ by others, a right to ‘security,’ a right to ‘feel safe’; in contrast, the Other is treated as rightsless. Hence it ends up waging a constant war to silence those who reject its dominance or who are forced to seek survival beyond its rigid parameters. The violent othering of perceived deviants leads to an especially strong “us and them” where “they” are defined as a race apart and where the basic laws of causality are suspended, with the other treated as an extra-causal daemoniac evil — hence the assumption that the other is somehow outside society, which is misconceived as a whole rather than a set of relations. This leads to the disappearance of any possibility of consistent ethics, particularly of ethics in a Levinasian sense. Hence, the importance of critical literacy has increased; it is now necessary in order for one to avoid a very pervasive systemic ideology.

As Negri recognized in his early work, the locus of the current situation is an increasingly violent shift from value to command as the basis of capitalism. This contributes to the mythologization of politics. Indeed, for the early Negri, there is a close relationship between mythology and command, connected to the reduction of the law of value to tautology in the era of real subsumption. In this society, the loss of the boundary between capitalism and the society it exploits, creates a problem for value because there is no outside standpoint from which to measure. Today’s crisis is that ‘value cannot be reduced to an objective measure’ because of real subsumption, which eliminates capitalism’s dependence on a social Other (Negri 1996:151–2). Real subsumption is the realization of the law of value, but also passes beyond it into mere tautology (Negri 2003: 27.). The condition of immeasurability means that real subsumption is a permanent crisis of capitalism (Negri 1998b: 221).

Exclusion hardens social conflicts, as horizontal conflicts are misrepresented as unilateral violence by the excluded and hence rendered insoluble. This is a triumph of what Kropotkin terms the ‘political principle,’ unmediated statist command pitted against horizontal social connections (Kropotkin, 1897).

The onslaught of state violence creates a situation of everyday insurrection. Gleichschaltung in its original meaning refers to pushing an electric flow through a material which resists it; this was developed as an analogy for the attempts by fascist regimes to push state control through everyday life. To deal with the problem of lack of compliance or regime penetration despite the relative scarcity of political resistance, historians of Nazi Germany such as Broszat and Mommsen formulated a concept of resistenz. Posited against gleichschaltung, this term refers to a pattern of actions in everyday life which, through noncompliance, impeded the pushing-through of top-down imperatives and constructed everyday life as a relatively impermeable space. Similar resistance is documented in Kotkin’s recent work on Stalinist Russia, while Scott’s research that peasant societies constructed similar patterns of everyday resistance (Scott, 1985, 1990; Kotkin, 1995). Peter Huttenberger claims that liberal-democracies do not face resistenz simply because these kinds of everyday activities are not in any case treated as deviant, because an autonomous civil society exists (Kershaw, 1993). This may well be true of certain kinds of liberal democracy, but it is not true of the kind of neo-totalitarian regimes of control I am discussing. Everyday deviance becomes resistance because of the project of control which attacks it; it also becomes necessarily more insurrectionary in direct response to the cumulative attempts to stamp it out through microregulation. What the state gains in coercive power, it loses in its ability to influence or engage with its other.

The effect of social closure is to drive dissent which would otherwise take open forms underground; denied the status of voice, it emerges in the guise of apparent inert effects. Thus, rather than an absence of resistance, there is in fact a constant subtext of resistance which is not perceived as such because it is mis-categorized as social problems, deviance, criminality, apathy, problems of “culture” and so on. Arguing against this tendency in totalitarianism, Gramsci argues that by reducing political questions to ‘technical ones of propaganda and public order,’ struggles are constantly fought against adversaries rendered invisible by their lack of official voice, and ‘political questions are disguised as cultural ones, and as such become insoluble’ (Gramsci, 1971). This should be remembered whenever politicians come out with rhetoric about for instance ‘yob,’ gun, knife, or drug culture — the impermeable ‘culture’ is itself a product of political exclusions.

The state and conformists are engaged in a constant warfare against the excluded — a warfare of which they themselves are often unaware. For there to be dialogue there must be ceasefire; and for there to be ceasefire there must be a general awareness of the existence of social war. This requires an awareness of the discourse of the other, of the ways in which the unquestioned privileging of certain discourses is a violence against the discourse of the other.

The excluded

The excluded as a stratum (or formal grouping of social positions similar in their structural position) includes:

Radical activists and subcultures, anarchists and autonomists/autonomen Emarginati

People deemed unemployable, nonincorporable (psychologically different, deviant, etc) “Ethno-classes” and ethnic groups with “social symptom” status

People located in the marginal, survival, subsistence and usually also informal economies Hopeless and alienated people, especially youths

In the global south and the margins of the north:

Chanty-towns, “encroachers,” squatters

Landless poor and marginal peasants

Peasants involved mainly in subsistence production

Indigenous groups resisting displacement, extermination or incorporation

Also a stratum of disaffected intellectuals who turn up repeatedly in dissident movements. Standpoint of excluded intersects with critical standpoint:

Guattari (Molecular Revolution 200) placing oneself as far as possible outside the system, and “what is going on”

Barthes (Mythologies 157–8) on discourse-analyst as socially excluded Barthes (Fashion System 290) to open to the world one must become alienated; to comprehend the world one must withdraw from it

A wave of network-based social movements — some emancipatory, others less so — drawing on a particular sub-group of the excluded, namely young people (often young men, sometimes educated) with no place in social life. A particularly crucial subsection of the excluded

http://www.friendsofcameroon.org/2008/03/04/cameroon-crisis-continues-as-inflation-surges/

Cameroon crisis continues as inflation surges The Financial Times

By Matthew Green in Douala, Cameroon Published: March 4 2008

Much of the anger comes from a younger generation who see few career options beyond driving motorcycle taxis, known as “Bendskins” after a dance approximating the hip-swaying motion of swerving round potholes.

Entire population groups who transgress legality to live — to access land, water, electricity, transport, etc (40) — views these things as rights when the state does not because it stresses order and resources (40) — seeking legitimacy and support, governmental agencies have to engage and compromise with popular demands (41) CHATTERJEE POLITICS GOVERNED

Giustozzi has investigated the origins of the Pakistani Taleban, revealing that it flourishes mainly among young people who do not receive ‘peace, income, a sense of purpose, a social network’ from the established structure of tribal power (Giustozzi 2007:39).

In a different context, Slackman (2008) suggests there is a clear link between the stifling of young people with limited opportunities is a crucial factor behind ‘Islamic fervor’ in Egypt

Watts (2007) has referred to what is known locally as the ‘restive youth problem’ as central to conflict in the Niger Delta.

‘a tectonic shift in inter-generational politics in the region that has occurred over the last two to three decades driven by the consequences of structural adjustment and state authoritarianism... Youth as a social category of great historical and cultural depth, provides an idiom in a gerontocratic and authoritarian setting in which power, secrecy and sometimes violence can be harnessed as a sort of counter-movement, built on the ruins of failed oil development (Watts, 2005). Youth organizations have multiplied and metastasized: they often refigure cultural traditional institutions like egbesu, agaba or mutual support clubs.2 Since the 1980s they have directly attempted to capture organs of community power (for example Community Development Committees), but also challenge directly gerontocratic rule; not least they have adopted an increasingly militant stance acting as the erstwhile liberators — vanguard movements in effect — for the oppressed of the region. As Gore and Pratten (2003:240) properly put it, youth represent ‘shadow structures’

(Michael Watts, Petro-Insurgency or Criminal Syndicate? Conflict & Violence in the Niger Delta, Review of African Political Economy, Volume 34, Issue 114 December 2007 , pages 637 — 660)

Aug 09 — uprising by Boko Haram (literally “western education is sinful”), a sect opposed to western education, western commodities and the Nigerian state, ostensibly religious but targeted mainly at state targets such as prisons and police stations.

Greek revolt — controversy — while mainstream press blames unemployment and youth exclusion, activists (eg CrimethInc) focus on police abuse and capitalism — but the two are linked — perspective of excluded bridges the two

It is a sickness that starts not so much at the top but at the bottom of Greek society, in the ranks of its troubled youth. For many these are a lost generation, raised in an education system that is undeniably shambolic and hit by whopping levels of unemployment (Helena Smith, The Guardian)

Iran revolt — mainly urban young

In Iran, there is an entire dissident counterculture emerging from a similarly situated stratum of young people (Zanganeth ed 2006).

A Freeter (“a Japanese expression for people between the age of 15 and 34 who lack full time employment or are unemployed, excluding homemakers and students” — Wikipedia). Although the Japanese have coined a term for the group, they exist all over the world, and are a social force of underestimated and growing importance. The Japanese are unusual in giving it a name. This is the stratum which provides most of the participants in autonomous activism throughout the global North. In Japan, the Freeters General Union is a political body with a broadly autonomist and anti-neoliberal perspective, which organizes initiatives such as Mayday demonstrations and anti-government protests (see http://freeter-union.org/mayday/index-en.html). Many of those participating in similar protests in European countries doubtless come from a similar social position.

Whatever its name, this stratum is politically important. It is one of the most common constituencies of radical and insurgent political movements across the spectrum, and its peculiar situation — slipping outside the segmentary linear functioning of identity-narratives of paid work, consumer affluence and (nuclear) family — places it at the forefront of historical transformation.

Graham Harrison: “youth” (specially defined) as agents of revolt in Africa

Robert Wade — result of inequality is ‘a lot of unemployed and angry young people’ able to disrupt societies (cited Pieterse, Globalization or Empire, 68–9)

A growing number in the periphery are not only excluded from the role of full-time family- wage worker but may not get official employment at all, despite being bombarded with images of family and consumerist lifestyles (Gledhill, Power and its Disguises, 79)

Slavoj Zizek has coined the term ‘social symptom’ to refer to those groups excluded by such social processes — refugees, the urban poor, and so on — ‘the part which, although inherent to the existing universal order, has no ‘proper place’ within it’ (Zizek, 1999, p. 224).

Unemployed people are prevented both from actualizing and renouncing work (Zizek, Revolution at the Gates, 290–1), hence show an excess in capitalism

In LatAm the ‘overclass’ plants itself behind ‘high walls’ of suburban dev (John Gray, cited Pieterse, Globalization of Empire?, 69)

Chatterjee makes similar claims regarding India.

Marxism does not go far enough because its figures of resistance reproduce aspects of the dominant system common to capital and the exploited.

The conflict between included and excluded is superseding class conflicts among the included as the source of social antagonism today. Hence, a new division emerges which no longer follows lines of exploitation but rather of inclusion and exclusion. Alfredo Bonanno reconstructs the issue of class struggle in terms of “the division of classes between dominators and dominated, between included and excluded” (Bonanno 1993).

No longer a matter of ‘passing through’ capitalism, exclusion now creates opposition which amounts to a radical antagonism.

As Caffentzis puts it, ‘Once again, as at the dawn of capitalism, the physiognomy of the world proletariat is that of the pauper, the vagabond, the criminal, the panhandler, the refugee sweatshop worker, the mercenary, the rioter’ (1992: 321).

The stake between included and excluded movements is not about distribution or power within the system, but between ways of seeing, being and relating — scarcity vs abundance, state vs network.

Relates to underpinnings of alienation

As command replaces value as the basis of the dominant system, so the antagonism between scarcity and abundance becomes sharper. The crucial insight Deleuze and Guattari share with eco-anarchists is that scarcity has to be actively produced by alienated assemblages, by suppressing or warding off excesses and any recreation of (existential/psychological) abundance, a process sometimes termed ‘antiproduction’ (Guattari 1984: 34). For Situationists, alienated society is a kind of perpetual immiseration through suppression of the forces of life. Due to its basis in an idea of scarcity, capitalism cannot actually provide happiness, only ‘force-feeding survival to satiation point’ (Vaneigem 1967: 98). The idea of ‘planned scarcity’ finds practical significance in empirical studies of the ways in which global planners induce material shortages in the global periphery (George, 1976: Chapter 6). Scarcity thus establishes the field in which alienated social forms come into being (c.f. Sartre, 1960; Robinson, 2008). Its ‘anti-production’ is a perpetual process of social decomposition which actively reproduces division so as to render necessary the reconnections offered by the dominant system. ‘Industrial society thus secures unconscious control of our fate by its need — satisfying from the point of view of the death instinct — to disjunct every consumer/producer in such a way that ultimately humanity would find itself becoming a great fragmented body held together only as the supreme God of the Economy shall decree’ (Guattari 1984: 20). Hence, ‘either one’s desire comes to desire repression and becomes its collaborator... or it revolts against the established order and comes the under siege on all sides’ (Guattari MR 256)

While the system seeks constantly to impose scarcity on the excluded, the network forms arising among the excluded are tendentially forms of abundance, whereas the repressive ideologies of the included construct scarcity as an existential necessity, hence underpinning alienation. This is particularly clear in the cases of indigenous societies and European autonomism. to ‘work’ in this sense (they may be productively active, but in ludic and subsistence ways). A division thus emerges between what Marshall Sahlins terms ‘primitive abundance’ (2004) and the existential scarcity which underpins capitalism. The conflict between the two ways of arranging ecological and geographical entities expresses itself in a series of ‘resource wars.’ Capitalism has to constantly grab resources to render them scarce, constantly continuing ‘accumulation-by-dispossession’ against a tendency of networks to recompose abundance. Beneath its social production, scarcity is ‘chosen’ at an existential level, as ‘slave morality’ and reactive desire.

We have thus moved beneath the struggle within Marxism between exploiter and exploited, to the level of the struggle over the constitution of the field of exploitation itself. We are thus in the field of Baudrillard’s “Mirror of Production.” Baudrillard has argued that the system now functions by coded markings and exclusions, rather than exploitation, with the key divide running between conformity inside and subversion outside (ibid. 138). The exclusions based on imposition of the code are as central to capitalism as its internal class divisions, and are framed around excluding ‘symbolic power’ (a Baudrillardian concept similar to Deleuzian active desire) from representational discourse (ibid.137). The truly radical class struggle is, rather, the struggle against being enclosed as a class (ibid.158). It is thus a matter of radical difference, of the kind which Marxism fails to see in indigenous societies and symbolic exchange (ibid.14). Baudrillard calls for a utopia which is totally immanent in its revolt, ‘always already present’ and in ‘radical antagonism’ with the dominant system (ibid.162–5). Revolt, therefore, emerges not at the point of exploitation, but at the point of exclusion, below the bar of meaning and at marginal points (ibid.133–4).

Hakim Bey theorizes revolt as unregulated life. Capitalism is organized to prevent genuine coming-together; it only supports certain kinds of groups which are functional for it (which means, are for production or consumption), and the rest are faced with massive obstacles, such as the “business” of its members due to the pressure to work — a pressure away from autonomy which for Bey is “the single most oppressive reality we face.” Even to succeed in meeting in spite of these pressures is already a victory of sorts. (Bey, Immediatism). Or as the occupiers of the Athens Business School said in December: ‘This is the dilemma: with the insurgents or alone.’

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2008/12/12/we-are-here-we-are-everywhere-we-are- an-image-from-the-future/

We are here/ we are everywhere/ we are an image from the future

11/12/2008 Initiative from the occupation of the Athens School of Economics and Business ]

Marxists have begun to recognize the importance of these kinds of issues. Where Marxism goes wrong, and slips into an almost theocratic modality, is in its assumption that the other of alienation is a particular knowable type of entity or essence, which can be identified with labor and progress. Hence, while Marxists rarely assert this essence explicitly, and sometimes even disavow it (while continuing to behave ‘as if it still operates), certain of its characteristics can be easily deduced — for example, that it will be based on ‘labor’ in some sense, that it will be industrial and scientific, and that it will be highly collective. The attributes of this image of alternative sociality form something like a rival ‘trunk’ pitted against capitalism, repeating the dangers of representationalism and ‘substitutionism.’ Marxism could reconstruct itself in a manner which takes account of Baudrillard’s critique. Indeed, in autonomism it had already begun to do so. But in this situation, the Bakunin-Marx division reasserts itself.

The problem is that Marxists, and post-Marxists such as Hardt and Negri, tend to assume that the emerging ‘Other’ of the global exclusionary system will be

• Based on labor

• Highly communal and collectivist

• Industrial, modernist and secular

All rational assumptions if the Other is the included-but-exploited, but incomprehensible if the Other is excluded.

Politics of the excluded: networks

Three figures of excluded, indigenous, autonomous The “excluded” are most often referred to when passive.

Autonomy refers to exclusion or self-exclusion which is valorized — the construction of autonomous spaces.

Finally, indigenous peoples are constructed in binary terms as peoples excluded from or autonomous from the logics of state and capital — societies without the state.

In looking for figures of resistance, one is drawn to the space beyond hierarchical assemblages, where alternative forms of life exist or come into being. This is on the one hand, the space of the excluded, of the people and peoples deemed unincorporable or not worth incorporating by the world system, or consigned to its margins; on the other hand, it is the space of the network form as a form which contradicts, escapes and exceeds the hierarchical forms of the world system, the state and capital. This figure, the ‘social logic of the excluded’ so to speak, can be viewed from three different angles: as the excluded, defined in negation of the dominant system; as the logic of indigenous or non-state society, defined as a specific type of social form directed against the state and capital; and as the affinity- network form, a specific social form distinct from the hierarchical forms of state and capital.

Excluded as bearers of possibility of otherness; connected to affinity, network form, active desire — these connect to the excluded “class” as abstract machine, even though the actually- existing excluded also get pulled towards the other poles (of reactive networks, included, massification, etc)

Theorists sympathetic to social resistance such as Graeme Chesters make similar claims, attributing the ability of anti-capitalist protesters to mobilize effectively without leadership to a “swarm logic” based on distributed network forms of power (Chesters 2006).

Cf Giorgio Agamben: a new form of political subjectivity is emerging which renders the state irrelevant, and itself irrelevant to the state. ‘The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest or control of the State, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the State organization’ (1993: 85).

Some authors have gone some way in recognizing the alternative logic of networks. Hardt and Negri, for example, have typified summit protests and unrest such as in Argentina as examples of a distributed network form of organization, ‘the most fully realized political example we have of the concept of the multitude’ (2004: 217). Similarly, anarchist scholar Grubacic has argued that anarchism cannot exist as a stable tendency over time, as this implies parties etc; instead expresses a general tendency to identify hierarchy and seek autonomy from it, and varies with cycles of struggle. It has therefore operated as an organizing logic of the WSF and similar phenomena, without being adopted as a hegemonic ideology (Grubacic, 2004: 35–6).

The technological aspect of this view is taken furthest by leftists such as Hardt and Negri (2004), who view the network form of protest movements as an outgrowth of changes in production, of the primacy of “immaterial” labor and the rise of a new kind of capitalism based on network organization.

Where this leftist reading goes wrong, however, is in linking the network form primarily to high-tech or ‘advanced’ capitalist conditions. It is certainly the case that high-tech protest groups and countercultural movements use network forms, and that technologies allowing network construction are used in this construction. Hackers, open-source programmers and online protest campaigns are examples of network social forms. It is also the case, however, that similar non-hierarchical horizontal networks arise in almost every situation where people try to mobilize or cooperate outside the framework of the state and of domination. Hunter- gatherers and other indigenous societies, peasant movements, and the urban poor of the chanty-towns and ghettos are among the most obvious examples.

Networked forms among hunter-gatherers (Zerzan 1994)

Larissa Lomnitz (1977) studies survival and mutual aid networks in Latin American shantytowns, revealing that kinship and neighborhood relations form an entire informal economy enabling a layer of excluded people to survive on the periphery of major cities by means of horizontal relations.

Partha Chatterjee (1993) shows how the formation of Indian national identity leaves a trail of ‘fragments’ — identities based on class, caste, ethnicity, region, religion, and so on — which provide the basis for entire areas of social life organized beyond the reach of the state, in private associations and homes.

Hecht and Simone (1994) provide a series of examples from African societies of horizontal social forms such as ‘popular neighborhoods’ which ‘produce informal, and often illegal, associations, alliances, strategies and practice, that provide an infrastructure for the community and a measure of functional autonomy’ (Hecht and Simone, 1994: 14–15).

Affinity-network form as global alternative to state and capital

To attach ethical value to the politics of the excluded, one needs to insist on the right to voice. In today’s social war, the other does not even have the dignity of an enemy in a fair fight, but is treated as unspeakable. Without overcoming this primary exclusion, social problems will remain intractable, and resistance in everyday life will remain both necessary and justified.

One could, however, theorize the third option of ‘chaos’ in rather more affirmative terms. In authors such as Graeme Chesters (2006) and Hakim Bey (2003), the idea of ‘chaos’ is given positive overtones connected to those of Chaos Theory, as a proliferation of nondenumerable and uncontrollable affirmative forces in a situation of complexity and decentered power. This is the affirmative, active underpinning to the image of chaos or ‘anarchy’ as terrifying Real. The breakdown of world order could involve the diffusion of power on models similar to those in indigenous societies as theorized by Clastres. The ‘capabilities’ developed by global resistance movements could then become a new ‘organizing logic’ pitted against the world system, replacing control-systems with horizontal social and ecological relations (Sassen, 2006). Alternative network forms are structurally different from dominant hierarchic forms, and the society they form operates differently, by a different social logic.

Need to see the rose that grows from concrete, before seeing the thorns. (Today, only the thorns are seen).

Need to politicize exclusion (anti-sociality etc) into autonomy. Of course, this politicization of “anti-sociality” is incompatible with any attempts to win over the “decent majority” by appealing to their existing beliefs, attachments, and discourse. The “decent majority” can be faced only with the stark demand that it unlearn its dominance, its impositional discourse, and that it become other.

The revolution-to-come is not a new order but a breaking down of all social orders based on asymmetry, in favor of a horizontality without borders. It is being built, often unconsciously, in the constant everyday resistance to social control. And it is this conflict — between included and excluded, between an implicit politics of affirmation of voice and an exclusionary discourse of ontological privilege — which defines the social conflicts of our era and of our future.

In distinction to Mike Davis’s ‘planet of slums’ (2006), a world where the majority are radically excluded, the coming world is a ‘world of squats’ (with the social center as paradigm), or rather of informal diffuse networks distributed transversally, in which the excluded space becomes a space of abundance. The ‘world of squats’ might be a ‘world of slums’ with problems of resource extraction addressed and local areas reconfigured as planes of ecological connection.

(Davis even talks about a kind of war between the core world and this kind of peripheral shadow-world);

Maybe enclosure is the rise of scarcity, and unenclosed land/nature is the condition for abundance? The problem being that squats/slums have reclaimed too little to produce more than survival?

Hence, as the Uwa Declaration puts it, ‘the coming together of many voices, hands, cries. etc., make people free from aggressors and destroyers.’ ‘The key points of departure, then, are a strong sense of connectedness to the places we inhabit and one another’ (McMarvill and los Ricos, n.d.).

One must thus radically re-theorize wealth and poverty. We believe these are less accurately expressed in western thought than in indigenous conceptions which view wealth as a greater intensity of social and ecological relations on which one can draw for survival, wellbeing and intensity, and poverty is a lesser intensity or extent of such relations. In autonomist terms, one could associate the two poles with social composition and decomposition respectively. Social composition involves the construction of a dense web or network, whereas decomposition breaks down network connections and replaces them with hierarchical dyads of powerful and powerless.

The three alternatives in Barber’s Jihad versus McWorld (1996), the three possibilities for the world in Arrighi’s various works, and other analyzes of this type, typically pose an alternative between capitalism, the state and the included, or between neoliberal capitalism and a more inclusive capitalism, or between capitalism, reactive networks and the included. The kind of phenomena we understand in relation to the affinity-network category — autonomous social movements, indigenous societies, networks of the excluded — are viewed as small-scale, largely irrelevant, extremely marginal or powerless — certainly not as the beginnings of a new world. Why do we assume that these phenomena prefigure a wider alternative?

The invisibility of affinity-networks is a product of a perspectival distortion. Affinity networks by their very nature often pursue invisibility or are rendered invisible by the dominant frame of representation.

In addition, there are strong psychological reasons for those with attachments to the various alienated groups to deny the anxiety-inducing power of excluded networks.

And we would expect emerging logics to be less clearly articulated than dominant logics. As Negri argues, the transformative moment appears as ‘fireworks and flares,’ not as a clear trajectory (2003: 47).

Today, the same fear of the “rabble ” as in Marx

Hardt and Negri’s fear of insurrection, in Multitude

Fear of eg Barber and Held, of reactive networks, hence need for global state etc

Reluctance of socialist political groups to denounce unconditionally the new forms of exclusion, the war on the “anti-social” etc

And especially to abandon the assumption of a community with norms, with a desire and a pressure to conform, hence by implication of roles, of false performances, and of the field of fantasy, the split in social life, and the function of the trunk

Possibility of overthrow

For the excluded, insurrection is empowering. It is like something buried, breaking the surface; an ability to speak, to interrupt the social text; empowerment against the bullies and “authority” figures who make people feel disempowered, violated, humiliated and enraged.

The struggle between the excluded and the system is asymmetrical, but it is important to realize that victory IS achievable — to win, the system has to maintain the appearance of order, the invisibility or visible powerlessness of the excluded; in contrast, the excluded (like guerrillas) simply have to persist in preventing the system from realizing its goals.

Ultimately the confrontation is won or lost on the proliferation and persistence of forms of life and social relations, but breaking the monologue of the spectacle is a major part of this.

The excluded are locked out of the media (though an included other is occasionally let in, one never hears for instance advocacy of law-breaking or self-defense), and this contributes to the construction of the excluded as “social symptom.”

(In contrast, texts of the excluded find their way into academia, but usually with some delay).

To see from the standpoint of the excluded, or of one particular excluded group, including the general positions derived from minoritarianism (particularly regarding open space), leads to the active affinity form (whatever the specifics of the group).

To see from the standpoint of the excluded/one excluded group but with an aspiration to majoritarian status leads to the reactive “predatory” form.

Emergence of organic ideologies of excluded, e.g. Bonanno, Zapatistas. Several distinct groups of texts: post-left anarchy and post-autonomism, indigenous rights movement, various Southern anti-colonial movements, etc.

Problems for network politics

There are three main dangers to active networks:

• Drawn into “masses” in Baudrillard’s sense (recuperated, rendered passive)

• Transmuted into reactive networks

• Domesticated through patronage and deference

One rarely finds “pure” excluded — one finds logic of excluded in hybrid articulations with other logics or at least their fantasies — e.g. marginality which is primarily a survival strategy outside the formal economy, but is plugged into it at the margins, and may be connected to fantasies of inclusion.

The excluded don’t always develop critique of dominant model which is spread in media images etc. Hence can be pulled back into dominant discourse.

Pitcheral, Storpor — same structural forces which cause impoverishment make consumer goods increasingly available and visible.

The excluded are often tempted by desperation, pulled towards reactive attachments (to an identity which includes) or towards predatory actions against other oppressed people (based on a molar self, or on highly privileged single attachments such as drug use). The radical potential is not in these temptations but in networks and transversality.

Need to see in movements of the excluded the radical potential and not only the reactive distortions.

Media response to Boko Haram: need for MORE education. But the basic insight into exclusion is correct. The problem is its narrow, group-specific articulation.

Emotional appeal is appeal of affinity (small-world network)

Why do networks sometimes take an affinity form and sometimes a reactive form? Our suspicion is that the two kinds of networks exist on a continuum, with situations of abundance and scarcity tending to produce oscillations towards one pole or the other. In G. William Skinner’s study of Chinese peasants, the image of peasants as traditionalist and closed is challenged by showing that villagers’ responses to external opportunities and dangers led to changes in the normative sphere of peasant life. Whereas an open context led to openness, a hostile situation with external instability led to greater closure and normative intolerance (Skinner 1971). This suggests that a real external threat can generate or at least strengthen local reactive forces, and that a safe ‘transversal’ context opens up communities whereas a dangerous ‘globalized’ context closes them.

Reactive networks tend to be a kind of ‘group active nihilism,’ similar to Vaneigem’s idea of ‘active nihilism.’

But the question is how they can learn to valorize what they are, rather than mapping arborescent ‘norms’ onto their movements or scrambling to find a place on the inside.

Capitalism and the state can also incorporate networks as ‘roots.’ I would dispute the claim that either can be entirely networked, but they can and do incorporate networks and subordinate parts. These are what Deleuze and Guattari (1987), and later Day (2005), term ‘radicle’ as opposed to ‘radical’ networks.

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NOTE: Bakunin references: chapter references are to Marxism, Freedom and the State. Excerpt references are to excerpts from Statism and Anarchy at Marxists.org.

Some of this is new. Some is modified from Karatzogianni and Robinson, Power, Conflict and Resistance in the Contemporary World (forthcoming, Routledge). Some is modified from “The Oppressive Discourse of Global Exclusion,” in Mullard and Cole, Globalization, Citizenship and the War on Terror.

• Part 15, Chapter 2 : Post-Anarchism and Marxism

Post-Anarchism and Marxism

Simon Choat

Power and Subjectivity: A Critique of Post-Anarchism

Prominent post-anarchists include Todd May, Saul Newman, and Lewis Call: they argue both that there is a continuum between classical anarchism and post-structuralism and that the latter can radicalize and reenergize the former. It is claimed by post-anarchists that whereas Marxism is economically reductionist and places its faith in the notion of a vanguard party of the industrial proletariat, both classical anarchism and post-structuralism advance a more subtle analysis of power in its own right, irreducible to the economy, and place their faith in resistance from below, opposing all forms of hierarchy. Classical anarchism is nonetheless criticized for retaining an essentialist concept of the human subject and for focusing too much on the power of the state. It is argued that post-structuralism, with its decentering of subjectivity and its deepening of the critique of power beyond state and capital, can here act as a corrective, leading to a postanarchism — or post-structuralist anarchism — that can act as an alternative to the authoritarian and anachronistic discourse of Marxism.

This paper challenges some of the assumptions of post-anarchism, arguing that post-anarchists have been too quick to marginalize Marxism. Post-anarchists are correct to claim that the classical anarchist critique of Marxism is valuable — but they are also correct to highlight the naivety of classical anarchism’s assumptions about subjectivity and power, and it is precisely here that it is beneficial to turn to Marx. Whereas classical anarchism remains reliant on a conventional concept of human nature, Marx anticipates post-structuralism by analyzing the ways in which different forms of subjectivity are produced. Similarly, while classical anarchism tends to view power as purely repressive and confined to the state, it is Marx who widens the scope of power, examining relations of domination beyond the state and conceptualizing power as productive (of subjectivity) rather than merely repressive. I conclude that a contemporary politics informed by post-structuralism can best succeed if it draws on the insights of both anarchism and Marxism.

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In this paper I offer a critique of what is sometimes called ‘post-anarchism,’ focusing on its reading of Marx. I shall argue that post-anarchists have been too quick to marginalize Marxism. My aim is not to prolong or revive the dispute between anarchists and Marxists that now stretches across three centuries, but rather to stake a claim for the importance of both anarchism and Marxism to contemporary political thought. I shall begin by offering some brief definitions, before outlining post-anarchist views on both classical anarchism and Marxism, and then going on to present my own arguments about the continuing relevance of Marxism.

Post-anarchism is a broad current within anarchism rather than a unified doctrine or practice of its own: there are numerous disagreements among thinkers within this current. Not the least of these disagreements is about what it should be called. Probably the three most prominent authors in this area are Saul Newman, Todd May, and Lewis Call, each of whom have written book-length studies of the topic: Newman writes of post-anarchism, May of poststructuralist anarchism, and Call of postmodern anarchism. These different labels are not insignificant, in that they reflect different influences: Newman draws upon Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, and Lacan; May upon Lyotard, Deleuze, and Foucault; Lewis Call upon Nietzsche, Foucault, and Baudrillard. Without ignoring or trivializing these differences, it is nonetheless possible to identify common threads, and thus to speak of a coherent, if loose and flexible, movement. For purposes of consistency I shall refer throughout this paper to post-anarchism and post-structuralism.

The crucial common claim that post-anarchists make is that post-structuralism can be understood as a radicalization of classical anarchism: this means both that post-structuralism is in the tradition of classical anarchism — there is ‘an ethical continuum’ between them, to use Saul Newman’s words[603] — and that post-structuralism can act as a remedy to the faults and flaws of classical anarchism without betraying its spirit and aims. Post-anarchism thus posits poststructuralism as both a rereading of classical anarchism and as a development within the tradition of anarchism. Classical anarchism here refers to the work of nineteenth-century thinkers like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, and so on, but can also cover twentieth-century anarchists like Murray Bookchin. Post-structuralism is a more problematic term. Rather than trying to develop my own definition of post-structuralism here, what I am interested in is how post-anarchism understands and uses this term. We have already seen the kinds of thinkers who are covered by term: Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, and so on. Post-anarchism identifies two key characteristics that are shared by these thinkers, which justify grouping them together in the first place and form the focus of post-anarchism’s interest. First, post-structuralism is anti-humanist: rather than taking the human subject as something that is given, it reveals the textual and material practices that constitute the subject. As Todd May puts it: ‘If poststructuralist political thought could be summed up in a single prescription, it would be that radical political theory, if it is to achieve anything, must abandon humanism in all its forms.’[604] Secondly, it is argued that post-structuralism rethinks the concept and analysis of power: the aim is no longer to establish the legitimate boundaries of power, placing limits between the individual and the state, but to demonstrate that power is coextensive with social relations, acting not merely to suppress a preexisting subject but also and more fundamentally to constitute subjects in the first place.. Analysis of these two concepts — subjectivity and power — is going to frame my argument.

With these brief definitions out of the way, we can now focus on how classical anarchism is interpreted by post-anarchism. Classical anarchism is praised by post-anarchists above all for its understanding of power: wary of the concept and practices of representation, classical anarchism offers a bottom-up analysis of power — meaning both that it recognizes that power invests the entire social field rather than emanating from a single central source and that it privileges political action from below. Characterized in this fashion, classical anarchism is contrasted favorably with Marxism. It is argued that whereas Marxism is economically reductionist, viewing all power as merely an expression of class domination, classical anarchism correctly saw that power must be analyzed in its own right: irreducible to the workings of the economy, power relations exist throughout society and need to be analyzed in their specificity, without reference to a uniform model of domination. By isolating a single site of power in this way, Marxism also privileges certain political actors. Just as power emanates from a single source, so there is only one agent capable of resisting and overthrowing this power: the industrial working class is identified as the sole possible instrument of genuine political change, because of its unique place within the only kind of power relations that really matter for Marxism, namely the relation of exploitation between labor and capital. In contrast, classical anarchism does not limit revolutionary potential to a single class, instead supporting agents dismissed by Marx, such as the peasantry and lumpenproletariat. Finally, Marxism not only privileges a particular revolutionary actor, but also a particular path to revolution, supporting an authoritarian party and proposing a dictatorship of the proletariat. In contrast, classical anarchism consistently opposes all state forms and all hierarchies, including those of the party. So far, these are standard anarchist criticisms of Marxism, centered on its supposedly reductive analysis of the political situation and its authoritarian organizational structures. The novelty of post-anarchism lies in its linking of classical anarchism to contemporary post-structuralism. The claim is that the classical anarchist view of power as a decentered field of struggle which refuses to privilege any single political agency or model anticipates post-structuralist views on power. Classical anarchism and post-structuralism are thus seen as united in their opposition to Marxism, which is dismissed as an anachronistic discourse whose diagnoses and prognoses are not merely mistaken but dangerous.

Classical anarchism is, however, not uncritically endorsed or appropriated by postanarchists. It is seen as suffering from some of the naiveties common to most modern political theories, including Marxism. As Saul Newman puts it: ‘Anarchism remains buried within an Enlightenment political paradigm.’[605] There are two central and related charges. First, classical anarchism relies on an essentialist concept of human nature, positing a rational, unified subject in possession of stable and immutable characteristics. This concept of a human essence is then used as a standard with which to critique and resist forms of power. Opposed to the naturality of the human subject within an organic community is the artificial power of the state. This leads to a second naivety within classical anarchism: its view that power is repressive and centered mainly in the state. Although it is commended for deepening and broadening the analysis of power, classical anarchism is simultaneously rebuked for not going far enough in this direction. There is an equivocation in classical anarchism between, to use Todd May’s terms, a tactical approach which recognizes a plurality of irreducible but intersecting sites of power and a strategic approach that assumes that there is a single site of struggle and therefore a single goal (namely overthrowing the state).[606] While it avoids the economic reductionism that has been imputed to Marxism, it is argued that anarchism remains too focused on the state as the prime agency and site of power in society. In accordance with its conceptualization of political agency in terms of an essential human nature, anarchism understands power only as a suppressive force, constraining and limiting the natural powers and capacities of the human subject. The goal of political practice is therefore to overthrow this repressive force in order to liberate our essential qualities as human beings. These two elements of classical anarchism are thus intimately linked: the target of power is human nature, and it is human nature that makes possible criticism of and resistance to power.

Post-anarchists argue that it is here in particular that post-structuralism has something to offer anarchism. Post-structuralism’s challenge to traditional theories of the subject undermines the notion that there is a unified human essence. The subject is rethought as the product of competing forces, and the focus of interest shifts to the mechanisms through which the subject is constituted. Correspondingly, power is conceptualized not merely as repressive but as productive: it is practices of power that constitute the subject. Hence as in classical anarchism the themes of power and subjectivity are in post-structuralism intimately linked, but in a very different way: power is constitutive of a subjectivity that is never merely given but is always the result of historically contingent practices.

Although the current of post-anarchism has generated some lively discussion, this discussion has so far largely been confined to the anarchist community. Critics have thus tended to concentrate on post-anarchism’s understanding and interpretation of classical anarchism. A number of commentators have argued that the anarchist tradition has been unfairly and misleadingly represented: anarchism, it is argued, is a far more varied tradition than postanarchism claims, and is far less beholden to essentialist and humanist philosophies. This leads to the conclusion either that anarchism already has more in common with post-structuralism than has been acknowledged, or that post-structuralism might have something to learn from anarchism.[607] Because the responses to post-anarchism have so far come mainly from within the anarchist community, its criticisms of Marxism have largely been ignored — not because they are deemed to be of no relevance or interest, but because they are taken as self-evident truths that need no further discussion.[608] I am going to bracket the question of the accuracy of postanarchism’s representation of classical anarchism — not because I think it is accurate or because I think it is not an interesting question, but because I would like to pursue a different line of inquiry: I would like to claim that it is Marxism that has been unfairly and misleadingly represented by post-anarchism. This is not to say that its criticisms of Marxism are wholly without justification or merit. Rather, it is to claim that Marxism has more to offer than has been acknowledged. In fact if we are looking for forerunners of post-structuralism then Marxism seems a far more convincing candidate than anarchism. At the very least Marxism deserves more than the cursory dismissal it has received at the hands of post-anarchism. Post-anarchism has argued that classical anarchism provides naive analyzes of power and subjectivity — but it is precisely in these areas that it is beneficial to turn to Marxism, which is what I would like to do now. Rather than drawing from the entire history of Marxist theory I suggest we turn to Marx himself. Anarchists and post-anarchists alike have tended to conflate Marx and Marxism, seeing the failures of Marxist regimes in the twentieth century as confirmation of the failings of Marx’s own work, and characterizing Marxist theory after Marx as little more than a perpetual and necessarily hopeless attempt to justify the unjustifiable.[609] The distinction I want to make between Marx and Marxism is not a desperate attempt to save Marx or absolve him of responsibility. The aim is not to effect a return to a truer Marx, untainted by the events undertaken in his name, but to turn to Marx as the most original thinker and potent resource in the Marxist tradition. It seems to me that this approach is far more in the spirit of post-structuralism than is the repudiation of Marx undertaken by the post-anarchists: thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze consistently and repeatedly distinguish between Marx and Marxism — not as a way of effacing the connection between Marx and Marxism, but as part of an insistence that any connections must be studied in their specificity and with care, and a recognition that Marx still has much to offer.

A central claim of post-anarchism is that post-structuralism undertakes a decentering of subjectivity and offers a subject without metaphysical grounding, which contrasts favorably with classical anarchism’s conventional notion of human nature. It is clear that to an extent Marx shares with classical anarchism this conventional notion of human nature. The concept of alienation, which is present throughout Marx’s work, certainly seems to rely on the idea that there are certain essential human attributes. But alongside this conventional view, there is something much more novel in Marx: in contrast to his anarchist contemporaries, Marx fatally undermines the concept of human essence. As early as the ‘Theses on Feuerbach,’ he displaces ‘the essence of man’ into ‘the ensemble of the social relations’: in effect, there is no human essence, because what was taken as essential is shown by Marx to be mutable and historically contingent.[610] Some post-anarchists have argued that the anarchist Max Stirner might be seen as a forerunner of post-structuralism ideas about subjectivity: in arguing that the concept of ‘Man’ is nothing more than a form of power, an abstraction that enslaves the individual, Stirner completely rejects the idea that there is a fixed human essence. This reappropriation of Stirner is not wholly convincing, however. As Marx points out in his lengthy critique of Stirner in The German Ideology, Stirner sees the concept of ‘Man’ — along with those of God, emperor, fatherland, and so on — as nothing more than an abstraction, and as such believes that one need only personally decide to rid oneself of this abstraction in order to be free. He thus commits the error that Marx attributes to all Young Hegelians: believing that the world is ruled by ideas, Stirner thinks that one need only combat these ideas in order to achieve liberation. But as Marx argues, if one destroys the idea of the emperor, one still has the real, actually existing emperor to deal with. Likewise, if we rid ourselves of the concept of Man, we will still be left with the actual social relations that underlie this abstraction.

For Marx the aim of criticism is not merely to refute abstraction but to explain its genesis: to show how abstract ideas are related to material conditions. It is this argument that aligns Marx rather than Stirner or any other anarchist with post-structuralism. As Saul Newman correctly argues, whereas structuralism tended to dissolve the subject into a determining structure, the novelty of post-structuralism is that it shows that the subject is not merely determined but constituted at the intersection of various relations and practices.[611] This is precisely what Marx seeks to do: rather than simply dissolving the subject, making it the empty, shifting center of a network of social relations, Marx demonstrates how the subject is produced. A substantial part of volume one of Capital is dedicated to this aim. The central chapters of that book show that the individual is not simply an abstraction, as Stirner thinks: the individual is not merely the invention of liberal ideology or the ideal precondition or result of the exchange process; the individual is produced in a series of concrete material operations that Marx catalogs in some detail. Marx is clear that in order to maintain the exploitation of labor, it is not enough to rely on ‘the silent compulsion of economic relations’: capitalism needs individuals who have been disciplined and molded so that they fit into the production process like cogs in a machine.[612] Marx thus describes the production of what Foucault calls ‘docile bodies’: bodies augmented in economic force but diminished in political force.[613] This explains why Foucault explicitly and repeatedly cites Capital Volume One in Discipline and Punish, and why certain passages in both books are practically interchangeable.

Related to this rethinking of subjectivity, there is in Marx a reconceptualization of power. Just as Marx continues to rely on conventional notions of human nature, so to an extent he remains caught within a traditional way of theorizing power. The classic definition of political power that is found in the Manifesto — where it is characterized as ‘merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another’[614] — clearly remains indebted to the kinds of naiveties that poststructuralism seeks to expose and undermine. It suggests that power is the property of a single group, emanating from a single source and operating solely through repression. But in the same way that Marx undermines the very notions of human nature that he simultaneously continues to rely upon, so too does he destabilize the conventional view of power that he appears committed to. When Marx details the operations through which the capitalist mode of production produces the kinds of individuals that it needs to function he is describing operations of power: a power which is productive more than it is repressive. Post-anarchists sometimes argue that there is an equivalent naivety in Marxism and anarchism here: just as Marx reduces power to the economy, so classical anarchists tend to reduce all power to the state. But Marx’s move is quite different from that of anarchism. Marx agrees with post-anarchism that classical anarchism focuses too much on the state. (This is one of the accusations that he levels against Bakunin, for example.) By demonstrating that the apparently free and equal exchange between worker and capitalist sustains and is predicated upon relations of domination — and that it relies upon practices of power that are productive of different subjectivities — Marx is not offering a reductive view of power in which the political field of power relations is reduced to the economy and power is given secondary status with respect to economic relations. He is instead expanding the analysis of power, demonstrating both that power cannot be reduced to a single institution and that it permeates relations previously thought to be outside power. In classical political economy the economic realm is one of natural and spontaneous order and harmony to be left largely free from the artificial political constraints and interferences of the state: Marx’s novelty is to demonstrate that this supposedly neutral field of interaction is in fact invested with relations of domination. This is not a reduction of the political to the economic but a politicization of the economic, and thus the imbrication of politics and economics, creating what Etienne Balibar has called a ‘short-circuit’ between the two.[615] It is not Marx who reduces politics to economics, as both anarchists and post-anarchists have suggested: on the contrary, what Marx shows is that capitalism itself reduces politics to the economy, as it constantly undermines traditional political institutions and transforms all relations into mere economic transactions.[616] This is what Deleuze recognizes in Marx when he claims that capitalism functions through an axiomatic instead of through coding or overcoding.

We thus find in Marx an analysis of power not unlike that found in post-structuralism: power not as a possession used by one social group to repress another, but power as a field of conflictual social relations that is productive of different subject positions. Necessarily connected to this rethinking of power, we find in Marx a new way of thinking about subjectivity that anticipates post-structuralism. It might be objected that while it may be possible to find these things in Marx and therefore characterize Marx as a forerunner of post-structuralism, we can only do so if we ignore much else that is in Marx, picking and choosing from his work and discarding parts that we do not like. Two points can be made in response to this objection. First, the nature of Marx’s work makes it inevitable that this approach is used whether we like it or not: the forms and content of his work are so varied that we cannot help but be selective; any reading of his work will always be a partial interpretation. Marx himself does not offer his work as some kind of grand, unified system, and explicitly criticizes those who view his writings as some kind of ‘master key’ that can unlike the secrets of all societies regardless of geographical or historical context.[617] Secondly, this selective approach to Marx is no different from the approach that postanarchism itself takes toward classical anarchism: rejecting the residual essentialism in classical anarchism, post-anarchism nonetheless finds much else that is valuable in this tradition. This approach is inspired by post-structuralism, and indeed we find that post-structuralist thinkers themselves read Marx in this way: Derrida, for example, is insistent that there are many Marxes to choose from, and hence that any reading of Marx must be an ‘active interpretation’: ‘a critical, selective, and filtering reaffirmation.’[618] It seems to me that in its dismissive attitude towards Marxism, post-anarchism risks not only contravening the spirit of post-structuralism but also placing itself in a rather strange position whereby it values classical anarchism in spite of classical anarchism’s failure to recognize the productivity of power and the decentering of subjectivity, while simultaneously rejecting Marxism even though Marxism does recognize these things.

In post-anarchist theory, Marxism acts as a foil: it is both used as a contrast to highlight the strengths of anarchism, and at other times aligned with classical anarchism to be contrasted with the sophistications of post-structuralism. The effect is to render Marxism irrelevant to our contemporary situation, exposed and surpassed by the advances of post-structuralism but unlike classical anarchism incapable of redemption. My purpose in eliciting certain connections between Marxism and post-structuralism is to challenge this view not by simply reversing it and demonstrating that it is Marxism that has contemporary relevance and anarchism that should be condemned as an anachronism. Rather I have tried to show that Marxism deserves an equal hearing alongside anarchism. This is not an uncritical endorsement of Marxism in which we take it as it is and incorporate its insights as they stand. On the contrary, just as it has been argued that post-structuralism can offer a rereading of anarchism, so it is to be hoped that Marxism can be transformed by an encounter with post-structuralism. It is one of the many merits of poststructuralist thought that consideration of the questions it raises may initiate and facilitate the development of a more productive relationship between Marxism and anarchism.

<http://info.interactivist.net/node/2471>, last accessed 31 July, 2009; the second conclusion is reached by Allan Antliff, ‘Anarchy, Power, and Poststructuralism,’ SubStance 36(2) (2007), 56–66. A slightly different viewpoint, with criticisms of post-anarchism from a position much more sympathetic to poststructuralism, is provided by Michael Glavin, ‘Power, Subjectivity, Resistance: Three Works on Postmodern Anarchism,’ New Formulation 2(2) (2004) <http://www.newformulation.org/4glavin.htm>, last accessed 18 August, 2009.

• Part 15, Chapter 3 : Hardt and Negri: Anarchists or (Post)Marxists?

Hardt and Negri: Anarchists or (Post)Marxists?

David Bates

Not available.

• Notes

[1] Sydney, c. late 1970s, original emphasis.

[2] Nicolas Walter, “Has Anarchism Changed? Part Two Concluded,” Freedom, 10 July 1976, p.13.

[3] Both ‘carnival anarchism’ and ‘anarchist councilism’ were not original discoveries of the 1960s. As David Berry notes, many French anarchist communists in the late 1910s and early 1920s adhered to a “council anarchism” or “sovietism” David Berry, A History of the French Anarchist Movement 1917—1945, Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002, pp.47–72. Similarly, it is often claimed that classical council communists adopted anarchist views — for example, Philippe Bourrinet argues that in the 1930s and 1940s Dutch council communists, such as the Communistenbond, adopted a kind of ‘anarcho-councilism.’ Philippe Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900—68), N.p.: Philippe Bourrinet, 2008, p.315. And much of the praxis of the carnival anarchists resembled the bohemian individualist anarchist milieu in France from the 1890s to WWI, including the illegalist groups like the Bonnot Gang (such as a focus on everyday life, being based around affinity groups, and emphasizing living life to the fullest in the here and now, spontaneity and a rejecting regimentation, and fetishizing illegal activities). See Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang, London: Rebel Press, 1987; James Joll, The Anarchists, 2^nd edn., London: Methuen, 1979, pp.146–57; Richard Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siecle France, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989; and Alexander Varias, Paris and the Anarchists: Esthetes and Subversives During the Fin de Siecle, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. However, these bohemian individualists rejected Marxism completely, unlike many of the carnival anarchists of the 1970s.

[4] See my ‘The New Left and Anarchism in New Zealand from 1956 to the early 1980s: An Anarchist Communist Interpretation,’ PhD thesis, University of Otago, Dunedin, 2006, and Rabble Rousers and Merry Pranksters: A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa/New Zealand from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, Wellington and Christchurch: Irrecuperable Press and Katipo Books, 2007.

[5] See Colin Crouch and Alessandro Pizzorno eds., The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe Since 1968, 2 vols, London: Macmillan, 1978, and Beverly Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

[6] However, it would be mistaken to claim this revolt was inherently anarchistic. More often than not, workers and protesters mixed authoritarian views with anti-authoritarian ones.

[7] See Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left, pp.319–22.

[8] Marcel van der Linden, ‘On Council Communism,’ Historical Materialism, vol. 12, no. 4 (2004), http://www.kurasje.org/arkiv/15800f.htm, accessed 8 June 2009.

[9] Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left, p. 324. For studies of council communism other than Bourrinet’s book and van der Linden’s article, see Serge Bricanier, Pannekoek and the Workers’ Councils, St Louis: Telos Press, 1978; D. A. Smart ed. Pannekoek and Garter’s Marxism, London: Pluto Press; Peter Rachleff, Marxism and Council Communism: The Foundation for Revolutionary Theory for Modern Society, New York: Revisionist Press, 1976; Mark Shipway, “Council Communism” in Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, eds. Maximilien Rubel and John Crump, London: MacMillan, 1987, pp.104–26; Richard Gombin, The Radical Tradition: A Study in Modern Revolutionary Thought, London: Methuen, 1978; and John Gerber, Anton Pannekoek and the Socialism of Workers’ Self-Emancipation 1873—1960, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1989.

[10] For a few works which analyze SouB, see Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically, 2^nd edn., Leeds, San Francisco and Edinburgh: Anti/Theses and AK Press, 2000, pp. 63–4; Richard Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975, esp. pp.32–9 and pp.97–104; and Marcel van der Linden, “Socialisme ou Barbarie: A French Revolutionary Group (1949–65),” Left History, Vol. 5, no. 1 (1997), Accessed 11 June 2003, http://struggle.ws/disband/solidarity/sol_bar.html. For the SI, see, for instance, Jean Barrot [Gilles Dauve], What is Situationism? Fort Bragg, California: Flatland, 1991; “Decadence: The Theory of Decline or the Decline of Theory? Part Two,” Aufheben, 3 (Summer 1994), Accessed 22 June 2002, http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf 3 dec2.html; Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism; Anselm Jappe, Guy Debord, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999; Mark Shipway, “Situationism,” in Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, eds. Rubel and Crump, pp.151–72; and Peter Wollen, “The Situationist International,” New Left Review, 174 (March/April 1989), pp.67–95.

[11] Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left, pp.320–2. For Solidarity, see Maurice Brinton, For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton, ed. David Goodway, Edinburgh and Oakland: AK Press, 2004, and for Root & Branch, see, Root & Branch: The Rise of the Workers’ Movements, Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1975.

[12] Most accounts of the ‘situ’ milieu are autobiographical in nature — see, for example, Ken Knabb, Public Secrets, Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1997 for the San Francisco situationist milieu, for King Mob in the UK see ‘Jumbled Notes: A Critical Hidden History of King Mob,’ http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/recent/34-archivelocal/93-a-hidden-history-of-king-mob, accessed 26 June 2009 and for Heatwave see the recollections of Charles Radcliffe in Dancin’ in the Streets!, pp.325–80. See also for the UK and US ‘situ’ milieu, Simon Ford, The Realization and Suppression of the Situationist International: An Annotated Bibliography 1972 — 1992, Edinburgh and San Francisco, AK Press, 1995, pp.64–115.

[13] They translated and published Situationist material, although they also eclectically published left communist and anarchist writings. See Lorraine Perlman, Having Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman’s Fifty Years, Detroit: Black & Red, 1989.

[14] Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left, and Steve Wright, “Revolutionary Traditions — Council Communism,” Discussion Bulletin, 110 (Nov./Dec. 2001), pp.20–24, http://libertariansocialism.4t.com/db/db011107.htm, accessed 6 August 2002. Wright argues that when council communism was rediscovered, it was often through groups and thinkers outside the council communist movement such as Socialisme ou Barbarie and the Johnson Forest Tendency.

[15] See in particular Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism, esp. pp.77–117. But see also Chamsy El-Ojeili, From Left Communism to Post-Modernism, Lanham: University Press of America, 2003, p.36.

[16] Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left, p.12, asserts that the councilist current had been in existence well before the 1960s: he claims it originated in the 1920s and 1930s when the tendencies that followed Otto Ruhle and the GIC (Group of Internationalist Communists) rejected the concept of a revolutionary party within the working class.

[17] Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left, p.322.

[18] Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left, p.209.

[19] Cf. Alexandre Skirda, Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968, Edinburgh, San Francisco, and London: AK Press and Kate Sharpley Library, 2002, and Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, Edinburgh and Oakland: AK Press, 2009, pp.247–63.

[20] Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism.

[21] Rene Riesel, ‘Preliminaries on the Councils and Councilist Organization,’ in Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb, Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981, p.274.

[22] For some sweeping histories, or collections of material from the time, see Howard Ehrlich, Carol Ehrlich, David de Leon and Glenda Morris eds., Reinventing Anarchy: What Are Anarchists Thinking These Days ? London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979; Alexandre Skirda, Facing the Enemy, pp. 174–82; Gerald Runkle, Anarchism, Old and New, New York: Delacorte Press, 1972; George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements, 2^nd revised edn., Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986, pp.410–22; Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, London: Fontana Press, 1993, pp.539–58; David Apter and James Joll eds., Anarchism Today, New York: Doubleday, 1971; and Benjamin Franks, Rebel Alliances: The means and ends of Contemporary British Anarchisms, Edinburgh and San Francisco: AK Press, 2006, pp.54–75; and Colin Ward ed., A Decade of Anarchy 1961—70, Selections From the Monthly Journal “Anarchy,” London: Freedom Press, 1987.

[23] This makes many of their assertions problematic. For example, it is generally assumed that anarchism during the 1970s was a student “middle class” phenomenon. Yet in New Zealand this was not the case. Most 1970s anarchists were male, young (under twenty-five), white, unemployed and from working class backgrounds. Students were very much in a minority, and the vast majority of groups were not campus-based. See Boraman, Rabble Rousers, pp.135–6.

[24] For accounts of Anarchy, the Angry Brigade and Bookchin’s involvement in the 1960s and 70s anarchist movement, see Colin Ward ed., A Decade of Anarchy 1961—70, Tom Vague, Anarchy in the UK: The Angry Brigade, Edinburgh and San Francisco: AK Press, 1997, and Murray Bookchin, Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left: Interviews and Essays, 1993–1998, Edinburgh and San Francisco: AK Press, 1999.

[25] Examples include Woodcock, Anarchism, Runkle, Anarchism, Old and New, and David Goodway in his introduction to Alex Comfort, Against Power and Death: The Anarchist Articles and Pamphlets of Alex Comfort, ed. David Goodway, London: Freedom Press, 1994.

[26] See especially a series of articles by Nicolas Walter: “Has Anarchism Changed? Part One,” Freedom, 17 April 1976, pp.9–10, “Has Anarchism Changed? Part One Continued,” Freedom, 1 May 1976, pp.11–2, “Has Anarchism Changed? Part Two,” Freedom, 26 June 1976, pp.9–10, and “Has Anarchism Changed? Part Two Concluded,” pp.12–3.

[27] Boraman, ‘The New Left and Anarchism in New Zealand,’ pp.559–67.

[28] For a definition of class struggle anarchism, see Franks, Rebel Alliances, pp.12–3, although Franks does not seemingly include the centrality of class struggle, and the working class as the major revolutionary agent, as defining characteristics of class struggle anarchism. ‘Class-struggle anarchism’ came into use as a term in the 1960s to denote revolutionary, class-based anarchism (either anarchist communism or anarcho-syndicalism) that was opposed to the more liberal, individualist and reformist varieties of anarchism.

[29] Walter, “Has Anarchism Changed? Part Two,” p.9. New anarcho-syndicalist groups were represented by the Syndicalist Workers Federation, the Anarchist Syndicalist Alliance, the Anarchist Black Cross and the magazine Black Flag. New anarchist communist organizations were represented by the platformist influenced Organization of Revolutionary Anarchists, which changed its name to the Anarchist Workers Association in 1975 and later to the Libertarian Communist Group, and the Anarchist Communist Association. For a few overviews of the British anarchist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, see Peter Shipley, Revolutionaries in Modern Britain, London: The Bodley Head, 1976, pp.172–207, Franks, Rebel Alliances, pp.54–71 and “Anarchist Communism in Britain,” Organize! For Class Struggle Anarchism, 42 (Spring 1996), pp.15–8.

[30] See Daniel Guerin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970, pp.155–9 and Paul Berman ed., Quotations from the Anarchists, New York: Praeger, 1972, p.23.

[31] Cf. Michael Seidman, “Workers in a Repressive Society of Seduction: Parisian Metallurgists in May-June 1968,” French Historical Studies, Vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1993), pp.255–78 and The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968, New York: Berghahn Books, 2004.

[32] For example, the British Anarchist Communist Association declared it was for workplace and community councils, as well as ‘a Revolution of Everyday Life. Relationships now are based on domination and submission: bosses over workers, men over women, adults over children. We seek to change all of this. We seek not just an economic revolution but one that also frees us in our social and personal relationships.’ Of course, this statement also reflected the influence of new social movements, and in particular the women’s liberation movement. ‘Introduction to the Anarchist Communist Association,’ 1979, http://struggle.ws/disband/aca/aca_what.html, accessed Feb. 22 2001.

[33] See Sam Dolgoff, Fragments: A Memoir, Cambridge: Refract Publications, 1986, and The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, 3^rd edn., Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1989. He was critical of what he saw as the new anarchists’ impracticality, bohemian lifestylism, escapism, utopianism, individualism, anti-organisationalism, spontaneism, and their lack of thought. In short, neo-anarchism was based upon non-working-class aspects of anarchism. Dolgoff, The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, pp.1–3.

[34] See Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative, London: Andre Deutsch, 1968. It appears other French anarchist groups also drew upon councilism. Skirda notes that following 1968 the UTCL (Union of Libertarian Communist Workers) was tinged with ‘councilism and Marxism.’ Skirda, Facing the Enemy, p.181.

[35] November 1968 editorial quoted in Woodcock, Anarchism, p.271. The last comment applied particularly to the platformist Federation Communiste Libertaire. ‘In the Tradition: Part Two. The Second World War and After,’ Organize!, 53 (Summer 2000), p.25.

[36] Gombin notes that Noir et Rouge accepted “the notion of workers’ councils, as then expressed by Socialism ou Barbarie (1958).” Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism, p.86n. The influence of Socialisme ou Barbarie can be clearly seen in the brothers’ Cohn-Bendit’s book Obsolete Communism, wherein they noted their debt to the ideas of Pierre Chaulieu [Cornelius Castoriadis]. D. Cohn-Bendit and G. Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism, p.133. Indeed, they wanted Socialisme ou Barbarie to be cosignatories of their book. Margaret Atack, May 68 in French Fiction and Film: Rethinking Society, Rethinking Representation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, p.82. However, Maurice Brinton notes that Obsolete Communism was influenced not only by SouB, but also Solidarity, the SI, ICO, Noir et Rouge and Recherches Libertaires. Brinton, For Workers’ Power, p.103.

[37] Interview of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Anarchy, 99 (May 1969), p.153.

[38] See Boraman, ‘The New Left and Anarchism in New Zealand,’ pp.142–64. For example, many of the key members of the March 22 Movement were members of Noir et Rouge, such as Jean-Pierre Dutheuil and the brothers Cohn-Bendit.

[39] Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism, p. 83.

[40] I borrow the term ‘carnival anarchism’ from John Englart, but use it differently. Englart defines it as a disruptive, ‘chaoticist,’ anti-organizational scene. See John Englart, “Anarchism in Sydney 1975–1981 Part I,” Freedom, Vol. 43, no. 11 (12 June 1982), pp.12–5, http:/ /www.takver.com/history/sydney/syd7581.htm, accessed 24 October 2001. In this paper, ‘carnival anarchism’ is not used as a derogatory term to suggest that they were not serious, and thus ought not to be taken seriously. Nor is it meant to infer that they were interested only in having fun. In addition, many Australasian carnival anarchists were activists as well. In this regard, Graeme Minchin of the Sydney and Auckland carnival anarchists said that they called themselves ‘anti-authoritarians.’ He believes the term ‘carnival anarchism’ was used by the Sydney ‘libertarian workers’ to dismiss the ‘anti-authoritarians’ as a joke, and to deny ‘that we had any other activities than those which can be described as countercultural.’ Minchin, Letter to the author, 16 March 2006.

[41] See Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt, Autonomedia: New York, 2007, Rudolf de Jong, “Provos and Kabouters,” in Anarchism Today, eds. David Apter and James Joll, New York: Doubleday, 1971, pp.164–80; Roel van Duyn, Message of a Wise Kabouter, London: Duckworth, 1972 [1969]; Black Mask and Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea and the Black Mask Group, London: Unpopular Books and Sabotage Editions, 1993; and Franklin Rosemont and Charles Radcliffe, Dancin’ in the Streets! Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos in the 1960s as recorded in the pages of The Rebel Worker and Heatwave, Chicago: Charles H Kerr, 2005. Undoubtedly there were many other carnival anarchist groups than the ones listed above, for example, the Resurgence Youth Movement in the US, but they are lesser known.

[42] For a few overviews of this tendency, see Joseph Berke ed., Counter Culture: The Creation of an Alternative Society, London: Peter Owen, 1969; Peter Stansill and David Mairowitz eds., BAMN: Outlaw Manifestos and Ephemera 1965—70, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971; Stewart Home, The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents From Lettrisme to Class War, Stirling, Scotland: AK Press, 1991; Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture, London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968; Richard Neville, Play Power, London: Paladin, 1971; and Julie Stephens, Anti-Disciplinary Protest: Sixties Radicalism and Postmodernism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

[43] For example, Nigel Young maintains that “the Beats, Situationists, Provos, Kabouters, Diggers, Yippees — in fact, all the most active groups in the counter-culture — were continually labeled ‘anarchist.”’ Young, An Infantile Disorder? The Crisis and Decline of the New Left, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977, p.135. And Paul Avrich claims that Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were anarchists. Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, p.527n.

[44] Ger Harmsen, “Provo and Anarchist,” Delta, 10 (Autumn 1967), pp.31–2 and Rudolf de Jong, “Anarchism Post-1945,” Delta, 10 (Autumn 1967), pp.35–6. De Jong also notes “many anarchists — and I do not exclude myself — have been excited by the actions of the Provo movement and, at the same time, puzzled about its anarchism.” De Jong, “Provos and Kabouters,” p.171.

[45] Rosemont and Radcliffe, Dancin’ in the Streets!, p.378, original emphasis.

[46] Although this is difficult to surmise given the lack of information about the subject.

[47] For example, it reprinted two articles on workers’ councils from the SI in Anarchy 7, n.d., c. 1971.

[48] See Ken Maddock, “Bill Dwyer: An Anarchist Illegalist,” Tharunka, 21 April 1970, p.15, Boraman, Rabble Rousers, pp.8–12, 18–25 and for his role in the Windsor free festivals, see George McKay, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties, London and New York: Verso, 1996, p.16.

[49] Advertisement for Anarchist Congress, PYM Rabble, 2 (June 1970), p.9. The original quote is from Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It, New York: The Dial Press, 1968, p.56.

[50] Cruickshank, “Editorial,” Salient, 2 (1971), p.2.

[51] Kraus interviewed in the documentary Rebels in Retrospect: The Political Memoirs of Some Members of the Progressive Youth Movement, Director Russell Campbell, Wellington: Vanguard Films, 1991. Kraus returned to the US, and became an author and filmmaker, publishing many books through Semiotext(e) and Native Agents, such as Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader, which she edited with Sylvere Lotringer (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001).

[52] Farrell Cleary, e-mail to the author, 21 Sep. 2006. Auckland Resistance was often the focal point for the independent nonparty carnivalesque wing of the Auckland New Left.

[53] For a discussion of this trend, see Boraman, ‘The New Left and Anarchism in New Zealand,’ pp.313–6, and 332–6.

[54] Kraus interviewed in Rebels in Retrospect.

[55] There were many carnival anarchists in Australia other than these three groupings. For example, the Anarcho-Surrealist Insurrectionary Feminists (AS IF), the grouping around the Collingwood Freestore and free legal aid service, and the Kensington Libertarians in Sydney who put out the underground magazines Tharunka, Thorunka and Thor (for which Wendy Bacon was imprisoned briefly in an obscenity trial). See Anne Coombs, Sex and Anarchy: The Life and Death of the Sydney Push, Melbourne: Penguin, 1996, pp.243–6.

[56] ‘The Growth of the Australian Anarchist Movement,’ 1970, http://www.takver.com/history/aia/aia00031.htm, accessed 2 Aug 09.

[57] Joe Toscano, ‘Carnival Anarchism in Melbourne 1970—75,’ [[http://www.takver.com/history/melb/carnival1970_75.htm], accessed 2 Aug 09.

[58] See A. J. Baker, ‘What is Anarcho-Marxism?,’ Broadsheet, 64 (May 1971), pp.1–4.

[59] Max Nomad, ‘Comments on Anarcho-Marxism,’ Broadsheet, 66 (Sep. 1971), p.1. Nomad and the Sydney Libertarians were skeptical about the prospect for a classless, stateless society, and believed that there would always be an authoritarian elite. Therefore, the only thing left to do was to ‘permanently protest’ against any authority.

[60] Shadbolt in 1970 as reported in Ron Smith, Working Class Son, Wellington: Ron Smith, 1994, p.148. He said he tried working with workers, but found it too difficult. See also Shadbolt, Bullshit and Jellybeans, Wellington: Alister Taylor, 1971, p.66–7.

[61] A. L. Constandse and Harry Mulisch, “Interview with Roel van Duyn,” Delta, 10 (Autumn 1967), p.28.

[62] Kempton, Provo, pp.91–104.

[63] Anarchy Newsletter, Aug. 1977, p.1. However, in Compass, they published an article by John Milne, a ‘hippie anarchist’ who produced the underground magazine Earwig.

[64] Compass, Sep./Oct. 1974, p.22.

[65] Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney.’

[66] Although Connie Healy claims that it founded in 1968 as the bookshop of the New Left group The Students for Democratic Action, a group in which Brian Laver was a prominent member. Healy, ‘Radical Bookshops’ in Radical Brisbane, an Unruly History, eds. Raymond Evans and Carole Ferrier, Melbourne: The Vulgar Press, 2004, p. 204.

[67] Hamish Alcorn, ‘No Organized Anarchists in Brisbane?,’ http: / /www.ainfos.ca/99/apr/ainfos00118.html, accessed 19 Aug 2009.

[68] ‘The Radical Books of Queensland,’ http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/radical-books-in-brisbane/, accessed 19 Aug. 2009. See also ‘Honeymoon over: The decline and fall of the left coalition,’ The Old Mole, no. 3 (June 29, 1970), http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Honeymoon.html, accessed 19 Aug. 2009.

[69] For example, both the Napier Street and Crummer Road affinity groups of the AAA were in Ponsonby in Auckland. In the 1970s, Ponsonby was populated by a mix of working-class Polynesians, students and bohemians. These anarchist groupuscules represented the political wing of the Ponsonby counter-culture.

[70] See Boraman, Rabble Rousers, pp.103, 114–5 and 127–8.

[71] Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney.’

[72] Peter McGregor, Cultural Battles: The Meaning of the Viet Nam — USA war, Melbourne: Scam Publications, 1998, p.16. The Wikipedia entry for McGregor notes that he ‘discerned considerable similarities between the Situationist International (SI) & Socialism or Barbarism (SoB), let alone more general parallels between the SI (including its Libertarian Marxism) and Anarchism, especially in its council communist form.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McGregor, accessed 30 June 2009. This article was probably written by someone close to McGregor.

[73] Peter McGregor wikipedia entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McGregor, accessed 30 June 2009.

[74] Workers’ Councils, Sydney: Rising Free Reprint, n.d.

[75] Anarchy and the State, Auckland: Auckland Anarchist Activists, n.d., c.1976.

[76] Auckland Anarchist Activists, ‘Win a Cop Competition,’ c.1976.

[77] Grant McDonagh, Interview, Christchurch 24 July 1996.

[78] Terry Leahy, ‘Pre-War Anarchists and the Post-War Ultra-Left,’ unpublished manuscript, c.1981, p.32.

[79] Leahy, ‘Pre-War Anarchists,’ pp.8–10.

[80] Peter McGregor wikipedia entry, http: / / en.wikipedia.org/ wiki / Peter McGregor

[81] Peter McGregor wikipedia entry, http: / / en.wikipedia.org/ wiki / Peter McGregor

[82] Minchin, Interview.

[83] Frank Prebble, Interview, Christchurch 14 May 1996.

[84] Oliver Robb, Anarchy in Albert Park: An Attack on the ‘Work Ethic,’ Christchurch: Christchurch Anarchy Group, 1976, p.2 (original emphasis). Robb claimed that questioning the work ethic “presents a real threat to the foundations of our industrial society” (p.2).

[85] Aufheben, “Unemployed Recalcitrance and Welfare Restructuring in the UK Today,” in Stop the Clock! Critiques of the New Social Workhouse, Brighton: Aufheben, 2000, Accessed 22 July 2003, [http://geocities.com/aufheben2/stc_auf]

[86] As Wildcat (Germany) write, ‘for many young people it was inconceivable to adjust to wage labor and to work away at a job until reaching pension age. Additionally, we ourselves refused to strive individually through a professional career for a better place in the capitalist hierarchy. Out of this grew the practice of jobbing: to do any old shitty job for a short time, in order then to have time for ourselves, for political struggle and for pleasure.’ Wildcat, ‘Open Letter to John Holloway,’ Wildcat-Zirkular, No. 39 (Sep. 1997), http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/zirkular/39/z39e_hol.htm, accessed 14 Aug 09.

[87] Prebble, Interview.

[88] Some anarchist communists, especially platformists, tend to assume that carnival anarchists are “individualistic” and “anti-organizational” because they reject the formal organizational schemes that platformists propound. Yet more correctly, carnival anarchists reject formal organization and are in favor of loose, informal organization.

[89] Prebble, Interview.

[90] Minchin, Interview.

[91] See Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney.’

[92] A 1976 statement by the Libertarian Socialist Federation, an anarcho-syndicalist grouping, quoted in Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney.’

[93] They even quoted the French platformist group the ORA with approval. SMG, ‘Editorial,’ Federation of Australian Anarchists Bulletin, Sep./Oct 1975, http: / /www.takver.com/history/aia/aia00038.htm, Accessed 27 June 2009.

[94] I do not know if any situationist groups were formed in Australia during this period, hence this section focuses exclusively on New Zealand.

[95] McDonagh, 151, Auckland: n.p., 1978, §12.

[96] McDonagh, Interview.

[97] Grant McDonagh, ‘My Involvement in an Ultra-Leftist Tendency,’ unpublished manuscript, 1981, p.1.

[98] McDonagh, letter to the author, 18 Dec. 1997.

[99] Sue Lee, Interview with author, Wellington, 31 July 1996; Cathie Quinn, Interview with author, Wellington, 1 Aug. 1996; Margaret Flaws, Interview with author, 24 Feb. 1997; and Frank Prebble, Interview.

[100] See Knabb, Public Secrets and Radcliffe, Dancin’ in the Streets!

[101] Anarchy (Christchurch), 1 (1975), p.2.

[102] McDonagh, Letter to the author, 17 June 1996.

[103] McDonagh, Interview.

[104] McDonagh, ‘My Involvement in an Ultra-Leftist Tendency,’ p.4.

[105] McDonagh, letter to the author, 18 Dec. 1997.

[106] About ten to fifteen people contributed material to KAT, of which about six were anarchists.

[107] McDonagh, ‘The Year of the Goat,’ KAT, 7 (1978), p.3, original emphasis.

[108] The free store was serious in communist intent, but also a satire of the local community around the shop, which tended to be wealthy and materialist “yuppies.” McDonagh, Interview.

[109] McDonagh, ‘Tableau in a Morgue: A Critique of the NZ Anarchist Movement,’ KAT, 5 (1978), p.5.

[110] McDonagh, ‘Tableau in a Morgue,’ pp.5–6.

[111] McDonagh, Letter to the author, 18 Dec. 1997.

[112] McDonagh, ‘Tableau in a Morgue,’ p.5.

[113] Andrew Dodsworth, Letter to the author, 17 Feb. 1997.

[114] Franklin Rosemont, Dancin’ in the Streets!, pp.61–2 and p. 68.

[115] See Ken Knabb, ‘Confessions of a Mild-Mannered Enemy of the State,’ in his Public Secrets, pp.89–156 for good examples of this.

[116] Dodsworth, Letter to the author, 17 Feb. 1997.

[117] Dodsworth, Letter to the author, 17 Feb. 1997.

[118] McDonagh, 151, §1.

[119] McDonagh, ‘The Year of the Goat.’

[120] McDonagh, Interview.

[121] McDonagh, ‘Irresponsibility vs Poverty: The Valkay Affair,’ 1979.

[122] McDonagh, ‘The Year of the Goat.’

[123] Auckland Solidarity was formed from the anarchist faction of the Auckland Resistance bookshop. According to one of its founders Graeme Minchin, Auckland Solidarity was not named after, nor organizationally linked with, Solidarity in Britain. He commented that they liked Solidarity material, but were not in contact with the British group. Minchin, Interview.

[124] Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney.’

[125] Solidarity, ‘As We See If, in Brinton, For Workers’ Power, p.153.

[126] L.W., “‘Solidarity’ and Anarchism,” Freedom, 17 April 1971, p. 2.

[127] Peoples Rights — Self Management is the Only Answer, leaflet produced by Christchurch Anarchy Group, c.1977.

[128] Peoples Rights — Self Management is the Only Answer.

[129] Anarchy Information Sheet, 2, n.d. (c.1976), p.2. The Anarchy Information Sheet was later renamed the Christchurch Anarchists’ Newsletter.

[130] Brinton, For Workers’ Power, p.81. See also pp.85–9 and p. 215.

[131] Alain Pengam, “Anarcho-Communism,” in Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, eds. Maximilien Rubel and John Crump, London: MacMillan, 1987, p.77. For the decline and stagnation of anarchist communism, see also John Crump, Hatta Shuzo and Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993, pp.xvi-xvii and p.20.

[132] Louis Robertson has divided the publications of Solidarity into three main categories. The first published the works of Cornelius Castoriadis. The second attempted to rediscover ‘important moments of revolutionary working class history.’ The third documented current working-class struggles, both in Britain and overseas. The latter was largely achieved through the magazine Solidarity and various special “motor supplements” (about struggles in the automotive industry). Louis Robertson, “Reflections of My Time in Solidarity,” Accessed 11 June 2003, http://struggle.ws/disband/solidarity/recollections.html.

[133] For example, Solidarity printed some special “motor supplements” that gave accounts of struggles within the British motor industry. Robertson, “Reflections of My Time in Solidarity.”

[134] Bretta Carthey and Bob Potter, Mount Isa: The Great Queensland Strike, London: Solidarity, 1966, http://libcom.org/library/mount-isa-great-queensland-strike-solidarity, Accessed 16 Aug. 2009.

[135] Bolstad, Interview.

[136] Bolstad, Interview.

[137] Richard Bolstad, Interview with author, Christchurch 16 May 1996.

[138] Andrew Dodsworth, Letter to the author, 17 Feb. 1997.

[139] Solidarity, ‘As We See If, in Brinton, For Workers’ Power, p.153.

[140] Janov quoted in Bolstad, The Industrial Front, Christchurch: Christchurch Anarchy Group, c. 1978, p.33. See also Bolstad, ‘Primal Therapy,’ Christchurch Anarchists Newsletter, April 1978, pp.5–8.

[141] Bolstad, The Industrial Front, and An Anarchist Analysis of the Chinese Revolution, Christchurch: Christchurch Anarchy Group, 1976.

[142] He wrote a manuscript of an updated version of a Solidarity pamphlet for New Zealand conditions, but unfortunately it was never printed and no copy has survived. Bolstad, Interview.

[143] “New Zealand Anarchist Contact List” in [Christchurch] Anarchy Newsletter, Nov. 1977, plus the correspondence of the Christchurch Anarchy Group, Frank Prebble MSS.

[144] Minchin, Interview.

[145] Socialist Action, 103 (12 July 1974), p.3 and Michael Bassett, The Third Labor Government, Palmerston North: The Dunmore Press, 1976, p.146.

[146] Adam Buick, ‘Solidarity, the Market and Marx,’ http:/7bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/english-pages/1973-04-solidarity-the-market-and-marx-buick/, accessed 17 Aug. 2009.

[147] ‘The fundamental contradiction of contemporary society is the division into those who own, manage, decide and direct, and the majority who, because they are deprived access to the means of production, have to toil and are forced to comply with decisions they have not themselves taken.’ Socialism Reaffirmed leaflet, in Brinton, For Workers’ Power, p. 18.

[148] As Bookchin has written, “If we.describe any social stratum as ‘proletarian’ (as the French situationists do) simply because it has no control over the conditions of its life, we might just as well call slaves, serfs, peasants and large sections of the middle-class ‘proletarians.’ To create such a sweeping antithesis between ‘proletarian’ and bourgeois, however, eliminates all the determinations that characteriZe these classes as specific, historically limited strata.” Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, 2^nd edn., Montreal: Black Rose, 1986, p.171n.

[149] Meaning that those who own and control the means of production gain the ability to give orders, or delegate giving orders to managers, and proletarians are forced to take orders because they do not own and control the means of production. See n.147 above.

[150] Christchurch Anarchy Group, Peoples Rights — Self Management is the Only Answer leaflet, c.1977 (original emphasis).

[151] Gilles Dauve and Frangois Martin, The Eclipse and Reemergence of the Communist Movement, Revised edn., London: Antagonism Press, 1997, p.73.

[152] Bolstad, The Industrial Front, p.40.

[153] Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, London: Elephant Editions, pp.159–74.

[154] This merger led to an important revision of Solidarity’s basic position statements, As We See It and As We Don’t See It in 1978. The rewritten section of As We See It went as follows: “There can be no socialism without self-management. Yet a society made up of individual self-managed units is not, of itself, socialist. Such societies could remain oppressive, unequal and unjust. They could be sexist or racist, could restrict access to knowledge or adopt uncritical attitudes towards ‘expertize.’ We can imagine the individual units of such a society — of whatever size or complexity (from chicken farms to continents) — competing as ‘collective capitalists.’ Such competition could only perpetuate alienation and create new inequalities based on new divisions of labor,” Accessed 1 May 1999, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8195/blasts/awsi/awdsirevised.html#awsirevised.

[155] Prebble, Interview.

[156] For more on Neil Roberts, see Boraman, Rabble Rousers, pp. 129–31 and Russell Campbell, ‘System Overload,’ Arena, 1 (2009), pp. 129–38

[157] Sean Sheehan, Anarchism, London: Reaktion Books, 2003, p.142.

[158] Sheehan, Anarchism, p. 141.

[159] Ken Knabb, “Critique of the New Left Movement,” Accessed 17 April 2003, http: / / www.bopsecrets.org/ PH /newleft.htm

[160] Point Blank!, ‘The Storms of Youth,’ in Re-Inventing Anarchy, pp.130–1.

[161] Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, 2^nd edn., Seattle and London: Left Bank and Rebel Press, 1994.

[162] Jean Barrot [Gilles Dauve], What is Situationism?, p.25, original emphasis.

[163] ‘We Have Ways of Making You Talk!,’ Aufheben, 12 (2004), p.59.

[164] Sandro Studer quoted in ‘We Have Ways of Making You Talk!,’ p.60.

[165] See Shipway, “Situationism” and “Decadence: The Theory of Decline,” in Aufheben for a more detailed critique.

[166] See CrimethInc Workers’ Collective, Days of War, Nights of Love: Crimethink for Beginners, Atlanta: CrimethInc Workers’ Collective, 2001 and Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook, Olympia: CrimethInc Workers’ Collective, 2004. However, some carnival anarchists have tied their carnivalesque activities to class struggle, such as when Reclaim the Streets supported the Liverpool dockers’ strike and London tube workers’ resistance to privatization in the late 1990s.

[167] As the unemployed are a part of the unwaged wing of the working class, their struggles are part of the class struggle.

[168] This is particularly true of Class War in its early phase, as Stewart Home points out. See his The Assault on Culture, pp.95–101. A minor, indirect link can be made between the anarcho-councilism of the Christchurch Anarchy Group and Class War. Jock Spence of the CAG returned to Britain in 1977 and became involved with a group of Swansea anarchists who produced a successful community-based paper, Alarm, which exposed council corruption. Alarm included Ian Bone, who became a prominent figure in Class War during the 1980s.

[169] This concept was creatively used by Christos Memos in his paper ‘Lessons Taken from the Greek Uprising: The Marxist-Anarchist Controversy Reconsidered In and Through Radical Praxis,’ presented at the Is Red and Black Dead? ASN Conference, 7–8^th September, 2009 CSSGJ to argue that convergence between the two traditions occurs in the praxis of rebel subjects as opposed to a discussion internal to theory.

[170] This idea was constructively and dialogically developed in the presentation given by Laura Corradi at the Is Red and Black Dead? ASN Conference, 7–8^th September, 2009, CSSGJ as part of a presentation in which she argued for dialogic and participatory methodology in order to uncover and engage with the concepts of feminism, anarchism, marxism and environmentalism as lived by ordinary people. She pointed towards the need for academics to engage with questions of the content of knowledge but also the processes of knowledge creation, which as she argued would involve the’ deconstruction of our identity as radical academics.’

[171] She is employed at the Oficina Tecnica Nacional para la Regularizacion de la Tenencia de Tierra Urbana (National Technical Office for the Legalization of Urban Land Ownership, OTN) and participant in the CTU of the First of May, La Vega.

[172] Marx, K. (1871) Chapter 5 The Third Address: The Paris Commune in The Civil War in France online version http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

[173] Luxemburg, R. (1904) Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy aka Marxism or Leninism http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1904/questions-rsd/ch01.htm

[174] See Franks, B. (2006) Rebel Alliances: The Means and Ends of Contemporary British Anarchisms (Edinburgh: AK Press) especially Chapter 2: The Anarchist Ethic and Chapter 3: Agents of Change pp.93–192

[175] Dauve, D. (1997) Capitalism and Communism section G Proletariat and Revolution in The Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement (London: Antagonism) online version http://www.geocities.com/antagonism1/ecapcom2.html#G

[176] It should be noted that Bakunin and other anarchists of the period were also equally prone to such reformist demands throughout their lifetime.

[177] Crump (1976) attributes this problem specifically with the impossibility of communist revolution in Europe during the Eighteenth century. This is an analysis that I believe does require greater critical evaluation relying as it does on certain teleological assumptions on technological and historical development. On a discursive level, however, I do agree with Crump that we can say with certain authority that radical theorists do now have, “the opportunity of constructing a theory of communism with minds which are relatively uncluttered with the baggage which belongs to the bourgeois revolution.”

[178] For a comprehensive history see “The Bolsheviks and Workers Control” In: Brinton, M. (2004) For Worker’s Power (AKPress: Oakland, USA)

[179] The quoted phrase appeared in one of the various blogs that have been created during the insurrection that took place in Greece, last December.

[180] Selected Writings, ed. D. McLellan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p.48

[181] S. Zizek, In Defense of Lost Causes, (London-New York: Verso, 2008), p.1

[182] Cf. L. Roemheld, ‘Marx-Proudhon: Their Exchange of Letters in 1846 — On an Episode of World- historical Importance,’ J. Hilmer, ‘Two Views about Socialism: Why Karl Marx Shunned an Academic Debate with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,’ Democracy & Nature, 6:1, (2000), pp.73–84, 85–94

[183] e.g. E. H. Carr, Michael Bakunin, (New York: Vintage Books, 1961); W. Bannour, ‘Bakunin’ in F. Chatelet (ed.), Philosophy, vol. II: From Kant to Husserl — The 20h Century, trans. K. Papagiorgis, (Athens: ‘Gnosis,’ 2006), pp. 175–86; there is also the well-known book by Aileen Kelly, Mikhail Bakunin: A Study in the Psychology and Politics of Utopianism, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) that reduces Bakunin’s ideas to a psychological case-study; as for Marx’s virulent critique of Bakunin’s views see ‘On Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy,’ Selected Writings, pp.606–9. Marx has in fact adopted the suspicion that Bakunin was a Russian spy. This is (most likely) incorrect, but James Ghastain has argued that for a period Bakunin was a paid agent of the French Republic; ‘Bakunin as a French Secret Agent in 1848,’ History Today, August, 1981, pp.5–9

[184] See for instance, M. Bakunin, ‘Critique of Economic Causality and of Historical Materialism,’ ‘Critique of the Marxist Theory of the State,’ The Paris Commune of 1871 and the idea of the State, ed. J. Xylagras, trans. J. Loumala, (Athens: Eleftheros Typos, 1973), pp.76–90, 94–103, Statism and Anarchy, trans. B. Alexiou, (Athens: Eleftheros Typos, 1978)

[185] D. McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx, (London: McMillan Press, 1984), p.102; M. Harrington, Socialism, (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972), p.62ff

[186] R. Rocker, Nationalism and Culture vol.2, trans. J. Karytsas, (Athens: Ardin, 2001), p.255ff

[187] See M. Bakunin, ‘Letter to the Newspaper Liberte\ ‘The International and Karl Marx, The Paris Commune of 1871, pp.38–50, 51–75; K. Marx, ‘Letter to Bolte,’ 23/11/1871, Selected Writings, 636–7

[188] e.g. D. C. Hodges, ‘Bakunin’s Controversy with Marx: An Analysis of the Tensions within Modern Socialism,’ American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 19:3, (1960), pp.259–274; G. Rousis, The State: From Machiavelli to Weber, (Athens: Govostis Publications, 1994), pp.205–27; B. Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, (Montreal/New York: Black Rose Books, 1993), p.58ff

[189] A. W. Gouldner, ‘Marx’s Last Battle: Bakunin and the First International,’ Theory and Society, 11:6, (1982), pp.853–884

[190] Graffito in the streets of Athens

[191] A. Badiou, ‘The Event as Trans-Being,’ Theoretical Writings, ed. & trans. R. Brassier — A. Toscano, (London-New York: Continuum, 2005), p.99; the main works that Badiou elaborates his theory of the event is Being and Event and The Logic of the Worlds. Whether Badiou himself would consider the revolt an event does not matter. My deployment of the term does not mean that I follow him in his analysis of the event in all the details or that I accept the ontology that stands at the background. The notion is understood in its broadest sense, as an eruption that (a) opens up a productive-creative potentiality and (b) cannot be comprehended solely in reference to the framework within which it occurred, the conditions that constituted the ‘evental site.’

[192] Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution, 20.3, trans. I. Zervos, (Athens: Papyros, 1976)

[193] C. Castoriadis, ‘Power, Politics, Autonomy,’ Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. D. A. Curtis, (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p.156

[194] J-L Nancy, ‘Church, State, Resistance’ in H. de Vries — L. E. Sullivan (eds.), Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), p. 103

[195] ‘Introduction’ to W. Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. H. Arendt, trans. H. Zohn, (London: Fontana Press, 1992), p.53

[196] P. Clastres, Society against the State, trans. K. Kapsabeli, (Athens: Alexandreia, 1992)

[197] The analysis that follows is based on research conducted for my PhD thesis, which has a chapter devoted on Greece. For further study out of a rich literature the following works are highly recommended: K. A. Raaflaub — J. Ober — R. W. Wallace, Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece, (Berkley: University of California Press, 2007); J. Ober, The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); C. Meier, The Greek Discovery of Politics, trans. D. McLintock, (London: Harvard University Press, 1990); Z. Antonopoulou -Trehli, The Political Philosophy of Ancient Greek Art: Politics as art — art as politics, (Athens: Livani Publications, 2001); K. Papaioannou, Art and Culture in Ancient Greece, ed. & trans. Ch. Stamatopoulou, (Athens: Enallaktikes Ekdoseis, 1998); C. Castoriadis, ‘The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy,’ Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, pp.81–123; J. P. Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought, (New York: Cornell University Press, 1982); P. Flensted-Jensen — T. H. Nielsen — L. Rubinstein (eds.), Polis & Politics: Studies in Ancient Greek History, (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press/University of Copenhagen, 2000); E. Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords: a Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, (London-New York: Verso, 2008)

[198] The notion of the ‘ethical subject’ is of course taken over from Michel Foucault; The History of Sexuality vol. II: The Use of Pleasures, (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp.25–32, ‘On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,’ The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow, (London: Penguin, 1991), pp.340–72

[199] G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Baer Life, trans. J. Stavrakakis, (Athens: Scripta, 2005), p.25

[200] See, for instance, M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality vol.1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. G. Rozake, (Athens: Kedros, 2005), p.163ff, ‘Security, Territory and Population,’ ‘The Birth of Biopolitics,’ ‘On the Government of the Living,’ Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–84, vol.1, ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley et al, (Allen Lane: Penguin Press, 1997), pp.67–71, 73–79, 81–85

[201] H. Arendt ‘The Concept of History, Ancient and Modern,’ The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. P. Baehr, (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), p.302

[202] Suppliants, 437–46; trans. T. Roussos, (Athens: Kaktos, 1992)

[203] Politics, III, 1275a 24–25, trans. N. Paritsi, (Athens, Papyros, 1975)

[204] Yet, especially in poleis like Athens where politicization culminated to a democratic-isonomous regime, exploitation of the poor classes by the wealthy was disabled and the elites had to constantly contribute to the well-being of the polis. The differences with today are telling

[205] Histories, III.83; trans. G. Rawlinson, (Kent: Wordsworth Classics, 1996)- translation modified

[206] C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. A. Lavranou, (Athens: Kritiki, 1988)

[207] In Defense of Lost Causes, p.416

[208] H. Arendt, The Human Condition, (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p.89n21

[209] For Marxism/socialism in general a classic expression of this view is Bernard Crick’s, In Defense of Politics, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)

[210] R. Nordahl, ‘Marx and Utopia: A Critique of the “Orthodox” View,’ Canadian Journal of Political Science, 20:4 (1987), pp.755–783

[211] C. Katz, ‘The Socialist Polis: Antiquity and Socialism in Marx’s Thought,’ The Review of Politics, 56:2, (1994), pp.237–260 This is also recognized by Arendt, The Human Condition, p.131n82

[212] K. Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right,’ The Civil War in France, Selected Writings, p.33ff, 584ff; McLellan and Harrington are probably right that Marx’s encomium of the Commune must not be taken at face value. Still, whatever Marx believed about the Commune and its prospects, it is generally safe to assume that he recognized in the insurrection certain institutional structures and corresponding practices that would have a central place in the post-capitalist society.

[213] For current social movements cf. R. J. F. Day, ‘From Hegemony to Affinity: The political logic of the newest social movements,’ Cultural Studies, 18:5, (2004), pp.716–48; B. Epstein, ‘Anarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movements,’ Monthly Review, September 2001, pp.1–14

[214] K. Marx, Grundrisse, Selected Writings, p.395

[215] ‘Critical Remarks on the Article: “The King of Prussia and Social Reform,” ibid, p.134, 135; This assumption, and its implications discussed below become apparent also in the following texts: ‘On the Jewish Question,’ The Poverty of Philosophy, ‘Inaugural Address to the First International,’ p.63ff, p.232, p.575ff; of course the most famous expression is the Communist Manifesto; for Bakunin apart from the texts cited so far see also the brief article ‘Political Consciousness and the Culture of Statism’ in The Paris Commune of 1871, pp.91–3 and the programs he had composed for the Alliance in Selected Writings, ed. A. Lehning, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), pp.166–77

[216] From this assumption stem other modern conventions like the translation of thepolis as ‘city-state’ or that the ‘primitives’ lacked any political organization. On the latter issue see the chapter in Clastres,’ Society against the State, ‘Copernicus and the Savages,’ pp. 11–32

[217] M. Bakunin, ‘Political Consciousness and the Culture of Statism,’ p.92

[218] For a comprehensive review see Roger Eatwell’s ‘Introduction’ in R. Eatwell — A. Wright (eds.), Contemporary Political Ideologies, (London-new York: Continuum, 2000), pp.1–22; Paul Ricoeur’s Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, [ed. G. H. Taylor, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)] remains an invaluable reading; also, a very interesting analysis of the concept that I read recently, with rich bibliography, is from Catherine Bell in her Ritual Theory-Ritual Practice, (New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p.187ff

[219] ‘The Birth of Biopolitics,’ p.74

[220] Voegelin took over this concept by Henry Bergson who used it -in conjunction to the respective one of ‘openness’- in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

[221] See, for instance, E. Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution, ed. J. H. Hallowel, (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1982), The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, Science, Politics and Gnosticism: Modernity Without Restraint, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 5, ed. M. Henningsen, trans. V. A. Schildhauer, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, Collected Works vol. 6, ed. D. Walsh, trans. M. J. Hanak, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), pp.280–96, 341ff, ‘Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme,’ Published Essays 1966–1985, Collected Works vol. 12, ed. E. Sandoz, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), pp.315–75, ‘The Eclipse of Reality,’ What is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings, Collected Works, vol. 28, eds. T. A. Hollweck-P. Caringella, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990, pp. 111–62

[222] The quoted notion is again borrowed from Voegelin; Order and History V: In Search of Order, Collected Works vol.18, ed. E. Sandoz, (Columbia-London: University of Missouri Press, 2000), p.63ff

[223] M. Horkheimer, ‘Art and Mass Culture’ in M. Horkheimer, T. W. Adorno et al, Art and Mass Culture, ed. & trans. Z. Sarikas, (Athens: Ypsilon/Vivlia, 1984), p.64

[224] ‘Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,’ Selected Writings, p.72

[225] ‘Theses on Feuerbach,’ ibid, p.171

[226] See M. Bakunin, God and State, trans. N. B. Alexiou — A. Gikas, (Athens: Eleytheros Typos, 1986), p.26ff

[227] G. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Sylvia, (Athens: Diethnis Vivliothiki, 2000), §84, p.62

[228] ‘Speech on the Anniversary of the People’s Paper, Selected Writings, p.368

[229] Cited in G. Rousis, The State, p.211

[230] That anarchism is the most representative instance of an apocalyptic-chiliastic consciousness among ‘modern utopias’ has been long ago noted by Karl Manheim in his Ideology and Utopia, trans. G. Androulidakis, (Athens: ‘Gnosis,’ 1997), p.231ff

[231] The quoted notion is borrowed from Stuart Hall, cited in W. Brown, ‘Resisting Left Melancholy,’ Boundary 2, 26:3, (1999), pp.19–27; http://muse.ihu.edu/iournals/boundary/v026/26.3brown.html (accessed 23/06/2009)

[232] J-P Sartre, ‘Is this a Democracy?,’ Modern Times: Selected Non-Fiction, ed. G. Wall, trans. G. Wall — R. Buss, (London: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 147

[233] The State: From Machiavelli to Weber, p.206

[234] M. Foucault, ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problemizations: An Interview,’ The Foucault Reader, p.382

[235] ‘The International and Karl Marx,’ p.62; see also his letter to Herzen cited in Carr, Mikhail Bakunin, p.385

[236] See, for instance, his letters to Albert Richard and Nechaev in Selected Writings, pp.178–94

[237] ‘Resisting Left Melancholy,’ p.21

[238] This is made known in the manifesto they sent after their latest act. The document is posted in the Athens Indymedia site: http://athens.indvmedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article id=1048828

[239] P. Kropotkin, ‘Two Letters to Lenin,’ To the Young, trans. N. B. Alexiou, (Athens: Eleftheros Typos, 1975), pp.94–99

[240] Not that this would have guaranteed ‘victory.’ Obviously history does not work this way.

[241] E. Cioran, The Evil Demiurge, trans. Th. Hatzopoulos, (Athens: Exantas-Nimata, 1994), p.183

[242] The quoted notion is borrowed from A. Hammond, Which World? Scenarios for the 21st Century: Global Destinies, Regional Choices, (Washington DC: Island Press, 1998)

[243] Apart from the relevant observations of Badiou and Zizek, for some pertinent critiques of identity- politics and the ‘cult of tolerance’ cf. W. Brown, Politics out of History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), ‘Subjects of Tolerance: Why We Are Civilized and They are the Barbarians’ in Political Theologies, pp.298–317; E. Meiksins Wood, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism, trans. A. Oikonomou, (Athens: Ekdoseis Stahy, 1998), pp.233–56

[244] The first notion is from Agamben (Homo Sacer, p.30); the second from Hans Zolo, Democracy and Complexity: A Realist Approach, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992)

[245] As it emerges in Pedrini’s posthumous autobiography (Pedrini 2001b).

[246] On the first, see for instance Marx’ early writings such as the On the Jewish Question and The Economic and Political Manuscript of 1844 (Marx 1978a and Marx 1978b), whereas the second is the view that emerges in all of his mature writings, at least since The Capital (Marx 1980). For a general analysis of the problem of freedom in Marx, see Petrucciani 1996.

[247] See, for instance, Foucault 1988.

[248] On voluntary servitude, see for instance De la Boetie 2005.

[249] Note the resemblance to Castoriadis’ idea of the imaginary constitution of society (Castoriadis 1987).

[250] On the contemporary development of such an idea, see for instance Bottici 2007.

[251] On the importance of the concept of recognition, see Honneth 1995. Bakunin, like Honneth, also probably derives the concept of recognition from Hegel.

[252] See for instance The Holy Family, where Marx says that man is not free for the negative force to avoid this or that, but for the positive power to develop his own individuality (Marx and Engels 1975). On the distinction between positive and negative freedom, see Berlin 1969 and Bobbio 1995.

[253] To begin with, see Foucault 1980.

[254] On the origins of the concept and its historical roots in modern moral philosophy, see Schneewind 1998.

[255] Hardt and Negri developed it through Spinoza’s notion of multitude (Hardt and Negri 2004).

[256] Proudhon pointed this out very clearly where he describes the antinomy between the two principle of freedom and authority (Proudhon 2001: 125–135).

[257] See for instance, http://www.anti-state.com/ and http://www.strike-the-root.com/ accessed 1 September 2009).

[258] On this point, see in particular the critique to utopian socialists and communists in the Manifesto (Marx and Engels 1978: 491–499).

[259] For a short but acute presentation of those novelties, see Marazzi 1999.

[260] Shukaitis and Graeber offer an interesting explanation of the reasons why Debord is so little quoted in the academic text: See, Shukaitis and Graeber 2007: 21–23.

[261] The only other place where it appears is A letter to Weydemeyer of 1852.

[262] See McGrew 1992 or Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, Perraton 1999.

[263] I cannot enter here the details of the critique of the prevalence of the problem of security in the justifications for the existence of the modern state. Let me briefly recall the paradox of such a justification, which, as Agamben has recently pointed out, consists in the fact that the subjects confers to the modern sovereign the right to kill them in order to receive the guarantee of their life (Agamben 1998).

[264] See Held, Mcgrew, Goldblatt, Perraton 1999 and Hardt and Negri 2000.

[265] Foucault first uses the term in the first volume of the History of Sexuality, entitled The Will to Knowledge (Foucault 1980–90).

[266] To make an example, if an eighteenth century writer when discussing the natural limits to political power could still observe that “a Parliament can do everything but make a woman a man, and a man a woman” (Dicey 1959: 43), this no longer hold because even the change of sex of individual can be regulated by state law

[267] Note that the reasons why the media worldwide has possibly called a movement that is the result of and even advocates globalization “no-global” is the strength of neoliberal ideology itself (or at least, its past strength). The idea behind this is that neoliberalism is one and the same thing of globalization, so that whoever criticize its dogmas of “there are no alternatives” is immediately stigmatized as a critics of globalization itself.

[268] Juris is therefore in my view wrong when he observes that the movement’s is only partially anarchist in that its logic also derives from a wider networking logic associated with late capitalism (Juris 1999: 213). In my view, one can say exactly the opposite: the movement is anarchical because it follows such a wider networking logic, which may well ultimately derive from post-Fordist capitalism, but has grown by far beyond it.

[269] See for instance the website of the national network of Italian GAS at http://www.retegas.org/index.php?module=pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=2&pid=10 (accessed 3 September 2009).

[270] On the political impact of open source technologies, see for instance Berry 2008.

[271] “Wikipedia o la fine delle perizie infallibili,” in Le monde Diplomatique-Il manifesto, april 2009, pp. 20.21. the article also mentions an experiment according to which the time for the correction of false information expressly put in some of its articles is only three hours.

[272] Recent books have corrected this picture. See Shigenobu Gonzalvez, Guy Debord ou la beaute du negatif Paris, Nautilus, 2002 and Anselm Jappe, Guy Debord, Paris, Denoel, 2001.

[273] Jean-Christophe Angaut, « La fin des avant-gardes: les situationnistes et Mai 68 », ActuelMarx, n° 41, 2009.

[274] Raoul Vaneigem, Manuel de savoir-viver a l’usage desjeunesgenerations [1963–1965], Paris, Gallimard, 1967 (quoted in 2^nd edition, collection Folio Actuel, Paris, Gallimard, 1992). Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, Paris, Buchet-Chastel, 1967 — quoted in uvres, Paris, Gallimard, 2006. English translations of this two main texts can be found on the Internet: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub contents/5

[275] Rene Vienet, Enrages et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations, Paris, Gallimard, 1968, ch. I. Actually, the book was written by Rene Vienet, Guy Debord, Mustapha Kayati, Raoul Vaneigem and Rene Riesel.

[276] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, in Cuvres, op. cit., p. 803. And again in 1980, the text Aux libertaires evokes “the 1936 proletarian revolution, the greatest which ever began in history until today, and so the one which also prefigures at the best the future. The only organized force which had the will and the ability to prepare and to do the revolution, and to defend it — although with less lucidity and consistence — was the anarchist movement [...].” (CCuvres, op. cit., p. 1515) Similarly, in Enrages et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations (op cit., ch. IV, p. 73), when they speak about blag flags in the giant demonstration of Mai 13, 1968, situationnist refuse to see it as a sign of significance anarchist presence inside the demonstration: « More than a hundred of black flags were mixed to the many red flags, realizing for the first time this junction of the two flags which was about to become the sign of the most radical trend inside the occupations movement, not as an affirmation of an autonomous anarchist presence, but as a sign of the workers’ democracy.”

[277] Raoul Vaneigem, Traite de savoir-viver a l’usage desjeunesgenerations, op. cit., ch. VIII, §2, p. 100: “From now on, no revolution will be worthy of the name if it does not involve, at the very least, the radical elimination of all hierarchy.” Marx is less quoted, and more critically. For example, ch. XVIII, §2 of the Traite speaks about “Marx’s authoritarian positions in the First International.”

[278] The most famous is the editor of Marx’s works in the prestigious collection “Bibliotheque de la Pleiade,” Maximilien Rubel, Marx critique du marxisme, Paris, Payot, 2000. One of the chapters is titled « Marx, theoricien de l’anarchisme ».

[279] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, op. cit., p. 797.

[280] In contrary of Anselm Jappe (Guy Debord, op. cit., p. 37–38), I’m not sure that Debord substitutes for a liberation by economics a liberation towards economics. Debord criticizes less economics as such than its separation.

[281] Ib., p. 798.

[282] Rene Vienet, Considerationspreliminaires sur les conseils ouvriers, in Internationale Situationniste, n° 12.

[283] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, §86, op. cit., p. 798.

[284] In the Manifest, proletariat was suppose to seize the state machine as such to make it work at his profit. After the Paris Commune, Marx argues that proletariat cannot only seize that state machine, mais has to destroy it immediately, replacing it by the Commune, which is the right political form for proletarian power.

[285] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, §90, op. cit., p. 800.

[286] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, §91, op. cit., p. 801.

[287] [Guy Bodson], La FA et les situationnistes (1966–1967) ou Memoirepour discussion dans lesfamilles apres boire, [Paris], [1973]

[288] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, §78, op. cit., p. 794.

[289] August von Cieskowski, Prolegomenes a I’historiosophie [1838], traduction Michel Jacob, Paris, Champ Libre, 1973.

[290] Guy Debord, Presentation inedite des Prolegomenes a l’historiosophie d’August von Cieskowski [1983], in uvres, op. cit., p.1536–1537.

[291] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, §76, op. cit., p. 793.

[292] August von Cieskowski, Prolegomenes a l’historiosophie, op. cit., p. 116: “Philosophy must get down from the theory’s highs to the field of the praxis. [...] Being the development of truth in the concrete activity, that’s the destiny of philosophy in general.”

[293] Bakunin, La reaction en Allemagne, in Jean-Christophe Angaut, Bakunin jeune hegelien: laphilosophie et son dehors, Lyon, ENS Editions, 2007, p. 123. See in the same book p. 91–95 and Paul McLaughlin, Michael Bakunin: the Philosophical Basis of his Anarchism, 2002, 1^st part.

[294] Marx, Critique du droit politique hegelien, Paris, Editions sociales, 1975, p. 197

[295] Ib, p. 211–212.

[296] Raoul Vaneigem, Traite de savoir-viver a l’usage desjeunesgenerations, ch. XXV, op. cit., p. 353: “revolutionarypraxis [... ] shows a rapid corruption the moment it breaks with its own rationality. That rationality is not abstract but concrete supersession of that universal and empty form, the commodity — and is alone in allowing a non-alienating objectification: the realization of art and philosophy in the individual’s daily life. »

[297] Bakunin, La reaction en Allemagne, op. cit., p. 125.

[298] For a comparison of Bakunin’s and Bauer’s views on this point, see Paul McLaughlin, Mikhail Bakunin — The Philosophical Basis of His Anarchism, New York, Algora, 2002, p. 68–71.

[299] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, §114, op. cit., p. 816: “The proletariat [...]consists of that vast majority of workers who have lost all power over their lives and who, once they become aware of this, redefine themselves as the proletariat, the force working to negate this society from within [le negatif a l’reuvre dans cette societe].”

[300] Ib., §206, op. cit., p. 853: “This style which contains its own critique must express the domination of the present critique over its entire past. The very mode of exposition of dialectical theory displays the negative spirit within it.”

[301] Raoul Vaneigem, Traite de savoir-viver a l’usage desjeunesgenerations, op. cit., ch. XXI, p. 266 et ch. XXV, p. 352.

[302] Bakunin, La reaction en Allemagne, op. cit., p. 136.

[303] Rene Vienet, Enrages et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations, ch. III, op. cit., p. 57, about the “barricades night” (Mai 1a, 1968): “Never the passion of destruction had been so creative.”

[304] Raoul Vaneigem, Traite de savoir-viver a l’usage desjeunes generations, ch. XIII, op. cit., p. 152: “People may be forced to swing back andforth across the narrow gap between the pleasure of creating and the pleasure of destroying, but this very oscillation suffices to bring Power to its knees.”

[305] See Anselm Jappe, Guy Debord, op. cit., p. 29–31. It is more difficult to agree with the author when he asserts that situationnists get here a lot from Lukacs, who had indeed emphasized the concept of commodity fetichism in Marx’s Capital but could not knew the 1844 Manuscripts, which were published later (first in Russian in 1927, then in German in 1932), after the publishing of Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (1923). In Lukacs, reification is more important than alienation.

[306] Raoul Vaneigem, Traite de savoir-viver a l’usage desjeunesgenerations, ch. VIII, op. cit., p. 96: “History is the continuous transformation of natural alienation into social alienation.”

[307] Guy Debord, La societe du spectacle, §30, op. cit., p. 774, about “the alienation of the spectator to the profit of the contemplated object”

[308] Anselm Jappe, Guy Debord, op. cit., p. 21.

[309] Mike Waite, « Paths that were not taken », New Times, 5 July 1997, 8–9.

[310] http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=neoconinfluence&neoconinfluence prominent neoconservatives=neoconinfluence_irving_kristol (accessed 18 August 2009)

[311] http://www.solidarites.ch/common/index.php/ (accessed 16 August 2009).

[312] http://www.labreche.ch/mps/presMPS.htm (accessed 16 August 2009).

[313] http://www.gauche-anticapitaliste.ch/?page id=2 (accessed 16 August 2009).

[314] See the case of Belgrado Pedrini, an anarchist from Carrara, (and many of his partizan feloows) as ‘flagship’ example of the anarchist persecutions at that time.

[315] Mandel is openly quoted in many places (Castoriadis 1977: 54–55), but some indirect criticism against Mandel’s thinking can also be found throughout the text (e.g., ibid. 62, 64 ).

[316] I am fully aware that Castoriadis believes that such a process of auto-institution is not possible in what he terms archaic and traditional societies, precisely because they are, in his view, closed (Castoriadis 1986: 514). However, I believe that, along the lines of Houston 2004, there is too much of determinism in defining a society ‘traditional’ or ‘archaic,’ and in particular by defining it so because of the heteronomy imposed by religion.

[317] E.g. see Pannekoek correspondance with S ou B at the end of 1953 at http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1953/socialisme-ou-barbarisme.htm (accessed 19 August 2009).

[318] Bourseiller’s book on the ultra-left has been criticized by many actors of the different movements under scrutiny in his book. There are many factual errors (people interchanged), yet, I have decided to use some of this information as it provides interesting links between different movements.

[319] Part 1, in S ou B, num 31, 1960–61, pp. 51–81 and part 2 in SouB, num 32, 1961, pp.84–111

[320] This conclusion which was reached for the period 1968–1980 certainly remains valid for current Swiss Trotskyite groups, as part of the current three-way division discussed above seems also to stem from personal animosities and refusal to acknowledge a shared form of political leadership, on top of classical divisions on the course to adopt in day-to-day politics.

[321] One further health warning from Cole should be heeded before the contested accounts are outlined. ‘From so heterogeneous a gathering, so filled with ready talkers and leaders, no coherent theory of government or of socialism could have emerged, even if there had been time to make one. Such theoretical lessons as can be got from the Paris Commune have to be read into it: non are to be found in it ready-made.... But the plain truth is that the Communards had no common theory, and were, during the few months of the Commune’s existence, much too busy to make one. This, of course, meant that each group, and each individual, did his best to make the Commune fit the pattern of ideas conceived before it began...’ (Cole, 1954, p.172).

[322] McLaughlin quotes Miller ‘speaking of anarchism and Marxism “Sharing the same ultimate goal” and of their “disagreement over revolutionary methods.” Similarly in error for McLaughlin is Woodcock, who states that ‘The Marxists paid tribute to the anarchist ideal by agreeing that the ultimate end of socialism and communism must be the withering away of the State, but they contended that during the period of transition the state must remain in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.’

[323] See April Carter, The Political Theory of Anarchism, pp. 70–71, for a fuller discussion of this issue.

[324] Many thanks to David Goodway

[325] Hal Draper, The Two Souls of Socialism, (London, 1996). For discussion of two pieces of recent James-scholarship, see Christian H0gsbjerg, ‘Remembering C.L.R. James, Forgetting C.L.R. James,’ Historical Materialism, Vol. 17, No. 3, (2009).

[326] Paul Berman, ‘Facing Reality,’ in Paul Buhle (ed.), C.L.R. James; His Life and Work, (London, 1986), p. 211.

[327] James D. Young, ‘C.L.R. James,’ Journal of the Scottish Labor History Society, 22, (1987), pp. 389. See also James D. Young, The World of C.L.R. James; His Unfragmented Vision, (Glasgow, 1999).

[328] On Robin Blackburn’s obituary in the Independent of 8 June 1989, see Ian Birchall’s letter in Revolutionary History, Vol. 2, No. 3, and for E.P. Thompson’s obituary of James, see Frank Rosengarten, Urbane Revolutionary: C.L.R. James and the Struggle for a New Society, (Jackson, 2008), p. 26. E. San Juan Jr has suggested that ‘James’s belief in permanent world revolution ultimately committed him to a radical-popular democracy almost anarchic and utopian in temper and motivation.’ E. San Juan, Jr, Beyond Postcolonial Theory, (London, 1998), p. 249.

[329] C.L.R. James, Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin, (London, 1980), pp. 60, 197, 199, 215. In the co-written 1950 work State Capitalism and World Revolution, anarchism was casually included alongside liberalism, Social Democracy and Stalinism as an ideology of ‘counter-revolution within the revolution.’ ‘The proletariat, like every organism, must from itself and its conditions develop its own organizations and its own means of overcoming them. One of the most urgent tasks is to trace the evolution of the counter-revolution within the revolution, from liberalism through anarchism, Social Democracy, Noske, counter-revolutionary Menshevism, to Stalinism, its economic and social roots at each stage, its political manifestations, its contradictions and antagonisms.’ See C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, and Grace Lee, State Capitalism and World Revolution, (Chicago, 1986), p. 132.

[330] Berman, ‘Facing Reality,’ p. 208.

[331] Paul Buhle, ‘Marxism in the USA,’ in Scott McLemee and Paul Le Blanc (eds.), C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism; Selected writings of C.L.R. James, 1939–49, (New Jersey, 1994), p. 56.

[332] James, Notes on Dialectics, p. 135. James was ‘J.R. Johnson,’ Dunayevskaya ‘F. Forest.’

[333] James, Notes on Dialectics, p. 150.

[334] James et al, State Capitalism and World Revolution, pp. 58–9. James, Notes on Dialectics, p. 118.

[335] James, Notes on Dialectics, p. 151,

[336] Leon Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism, (New York, 1976), pp. 103, 164.

[337] C.L.R. James, ‘Michel Maxwell Philip: 1829–1888 [1931]’ in Selwyn R. Cudjoe (ed.), Michael Maxwell Philip; A Trinidad Patriot of the 19th Century, (Wellesley, 1999), pp. 102–3.

[338] Quoted in Reinhard W. Sander, ‘Introduction: The Beacon and the Emergence of West Indian Literature’ in Brinsley Samaroo (ed.), The Beacon, Volumes I-IV, 1931–1939, (New York, 1977), p. xvii.

[339] The American labor historian George Rawick thought James a ‘Victorian hippie.’ Personal information from Marcus Rediker, 6 November 2007.

[340] David Goodway, ‘Charles Lahr,’ London Magazine, June/July 1977.

[341] Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (London, 2001), p. 303.

[342] C.L.R. James, ‘Charlie Lahr’ [1975], unpublished manuscript in the possession of David Goodway, pp. 2–3.

[343] James, ‘Charlie Lahr,’ pp. 3–4, 7. James’s chapter on the rise of the Nazis in Germany in his 1937 pioneering anti-Stalinist Marxist history of ‘the rise and fall of the Communist International,’ World Revolution, would owe much to Lahr’s influence and would depart somewhat from Trotsky’s analysis. See C.L.R. James, ‘Discussions with Trotsky,’ in C.L.R. James, At the Rendezvous of Victory; Selected Writings, Vol. 3, (London, 1984), and also James, Notes on Dialectics, pp. 38, 149.

[344] See C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins; Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution, (London, 1938), p. 320, and C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins; Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, (London, 2001), p. 332.

[345] Gidon Cohen, The Failure of a Dream; The Independent Labor Party from Disaffiliation to World War II, (London, 2007), p. 111.

[346] Young, The World of C.L.R. James, pp. 82–3.

[347] Goodway, Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow, p. 126.

[348] Vernon Richards, ‘Printers We Have Known: 1936–1986,’ in Freedom; Anarchist Magazine, Centenary Edition, Vol. 47, No. 9, (October, 1986). Freedom, the main British anarchist publication, then called Spain and the World used the Narod Press from October 1936-December 1936 and then from June 1937-September 1938. On Richards, see David Goodway, Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward, (Liverpool, 2006), p. 126.

[349] In November 1937, James would take issue with Fenner Brockway in Fight for forbidding I.L.P. speakers to stand on the Anarchist platform during the May Day celebrations in Britain in 1937 in order to appease the C.P.G.B. ‘The Trotskyists and the Anarchists are small. The Stalinists have money, press, incredible brazeness. True they are kicking the I.L.P. in the front and rear, digging them in the eye and spitting on them. All that Brockway can do is to complain querulously and allow them to terrorize him from standing up for the Anarchists and the Trotskyists. The moral cowardice of these men!’ Fight, Vol. 1, No. 11, (November, 1937).

[350] F.A. Ridley, ‘Anarchism and Marxism,’ Controversy, Vol. 2, No. 23, (August 1938). On Ridley, see Robert Morrell, The Gentle Revolutionary; The Life and Work of Frank Ridley, Socialist and Secularist, (London, 2003).

[351] Ethel Mannin, Comrade O Comrade, Comrade O Comrade; or, Low-Down on the Left, (London, 1947), p. 118. On Braithewaite, see Barbara Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance; Africa and Britain, 1919–1945, (London, 1999), p. 222. On Mannin, see Andy Croft, ‘Ethel Mannin: The Red Rose of Love and the Red Flower of Liberty,’ in Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai (eds.), Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals; British Women Writers, 1889–1939, (London, 1993).

[352] George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa, (London, 1956), p. 151.

[353] Raya Dunayevskaya, The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism, (Chicago, 1992), pp. x-xi.

[354] The National Archives, London: KV/2/1824/1z. ‘Stalin, he said, was striving for National Socialism, while Trotsky was upholding International Socialism.’

[355] C.L.R. James, World Revolution 1917–1936; The Rise and Fall of the Communist International, (New Jersey, 1994), pp. 168, 175, 178, 185. Arthur Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism; From Marx to the First Five Years’ Plan, (London, 1934), pp. viii, 236–7. James’s meeting with Korsch is recorded by Kent Worcester, from an interview in 1981 with American historian George Rawick. Kent Worcester, C.L.R. James, C.L.R. James; A Political Biography, (New York, 1996). p. 30. Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, (London, 1940), pp. 564, 570. See also Christopher Phelps, ‘C.L.R. James and the Theory of State Capitalism,’ ’ in Nelson Lichtenstein (ed.), American Capitalism; Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century, (Philadelphia, 2006), p.165.

[356] James, World Revolution, p. 140, and Worcester, C.L.R. James, p. 45.

[357] James, World Revolution, p. 371.

[358] Trotsky felt the Stalinist bureaucracy was a ‘temporary’ phenomenon, and in 1939 argued ‘Might we not place ourselves in a ludicrous position if we fixed to the Bonapartist oligarchy the nomenclature of a new ruling class just a few years or even a few months prior to its inglorious downfall?’ See Alex Callinicos, Trotskyism, (Minneapolis, 1990), p. 21.

[359] James, World Revolution, p. 296.

[360] See James, World Revolution, pp. 17, 415.

[361] One former comrade of James’s from the Marxist Group, Dr. Ryan L. Worrall in 1939 would put forward a substantial and sophisticated state capitalist analysis in the I.L.P. journal Left. Phelps, ‘C.L.R. James and the Theory of State Capitalism,’ pp. 165–6, 331–2.

[362] Mary Low and Juan Brea, Red Spanish Notebook; The First Six Months of the Revolution and the Civil War, (London, 1937), pp. 254–5.

[363] Peter Davison (ed.), The Complete Works of George Orwell, vol. 11, (London, 1998), p. 87. Louise Cripps, Louise, C.L.R. James; Memories and Commentaries, (London, 1997), p. 21. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, (London, 1989), p. 83. As Orwell noted of the Soviet Union in 1939, ‘Is it Socialism, or is it a peculiarly vicious form of state capitalism? All the political controversies... for two years past really circle round this question.’ Quoted in John Newsinger, ‘Destroying the Myth: George Orwell and Soviet Communism’ in Paul Flewers (ed.), George Orwell: Enigmatic Socialist, (London, 2005), p. 138.

[364] Socialist Platform, C.L.R. James and British Trotskyism; An Interview, (London, 1987), p. 10. See also Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast; Trotsky: 1929–1940, (Oxford, 1979), pp. 419–21.

[365] For my take on these discussions, see Christian H0gsbjerg, ‘The prophet and Black Power: Trotsky on race in the US,’ International Socialism, 121, (2008).

[366] Steve Wright, Storming Heaven; Class composition and struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, (London, 2002), pp. 1,3. Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically, (Brighton, 1979), pp. 50, 53, 183. On Mothe, see Ian Birchall, ‘Nineteen Fifty-Six and the French Left,’ Revolutionary History, Vol. 9, No. 3, (2006).

[367] [Phil Singer], The American Worker (Part 1: Life in the Factory), online at ‘www.prole.info,’ p. 1

[368] Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography, (Minneapolis, 1998), p. 62.

[369] James, World Revolution, p. 123.

[370] Fight, Vol. 1, No. 3, (January, 1937) and Fight, Vol. 1, No. 4, (February, 1937).

[371] Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism, p. 112.

[372] J.R. Johnson, F. Forest, Martin Harvey, Trotskyism in the United States, 1940–47:Balance Sheet; The Workers Party and the Johnson-Forest Tendency (Detroit, 1947), pp. 8–9. As Grace Lee Boggs wrote in her piece ‘The Reconstruction of Society,’ ‘to read Romano’s [Singer’s] description of the life in the factory is to realize with shocking clarity how deeply the alienation of labor pervades the very foundations of our society. All the preoccupation of the intellectuals with their own souls and with economic programs for “full employment” and a higher standard of living, fade into insignificance in the face of the oppressive reality of the lifetime of every worker.’ Quoted in Worcester, CLR James, p. 89. See also Rosengarten, Urbane Revolutionary, p. 71 and Paul Buhle, CLR James, The Artist as Revolutionary, (London, 1993), p. 70.

[373] The work was heralded as being highly original at the time. As Castoriadis later recalled, ‘for the first time there was something that was absent totally from the entire Marxist tradition and from Karl Marx himself except in the Economic and Philosophical manuscripts of 1844: that is the acknowledgment that being a worker does not mean that one is just working or that one is just being exploited. Being a worker means living with workers, being in solidarity with other workers, living in working class quarters of the city, having women who are either workers themselves or, if they are not, their predicament is the same or even worse than that of the men.’ Cornelius Castoriadis, ‘C.L.R. James and the fate of Marxism’ in Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain (eds.), C.L.R. James; His Intellectual Legacies, (Amherst, 1995), p. 283.

[374] Stanley Weir, ‘Revolutionary Artist,’ in Paul Buhle (ed.), C.L.R. James: His Life and Work, (London, 1986), pp. 183–4.

[375] Quoted in Wright, Storming Heaven, pp. 23–4.

[376] Ferruccio Gambino, ‘Only Connect,’ in Paul Buhle (ed.), C.L.R. James: His Life and Work, (London, 1986), pp. 197–8.

[377] Martin Glaberman (ed.), Marxism for Our Times; C.L.R. James on Revolutionary Organization, (Jackson, 1999), p. xxii. Paul Buhle, ‘Political Styles of C.L.R. James: An Introduction,’ in Paul Buhle (ed.), C.L.R. James: His Life and Work, (London, 1986), p. 26. Gambino was especially inspired by the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit — a Jamesian group whose first interview abroad was with Potere Operaio around the same time as The Black Jacobins — which had inspired the League of Revolutionary Black Workers — appeared in Italian. As Gambino recalled, ‘the interview of the League [of Revolutionary Black Workers] in Potero Operaio led to more than the well- known slogan of Potere Operaio: “Turin, Detroit, Togliattigrad, class struggle will win.” It signaled the death knell of the isolated within the narrow confines of the official left’s “Italian road to socialism.”’ Gambino, ‘Only Connect,’ p. 198.

[378] George Rawick published with others including Antonio Negri — Operai e stato [Workers and the state] (Milan, Feltrinelli, 1972), Lo schiavo americano dal tramonto all’alba (Milan, Feltrinelli, 1973), with Harold Baron and Hubert Gutman Da schiavo aproletario [From slave to proletarian] (Turin: Musolini, 1973). In 1976 Martin Glaberman published Classe operaia, imperialismo, rivoluzione negli USA [Working class, imperialism, and revolution in the USA] (Turin: Musolini), with an introduction by Bruno Cartosio. See Fernando Fasce, ‘American Labor History, 1973–1983: Italian Perspectives,’ Reviews in American History, Vol. 14, No. 4, (1986), pp. 602, 610–611. See also Chris Taylor, ‘James and those Italians,’ ‘http://clrjames.blogspot.com/2009/09/james-and-those-italians.html,’ and Paul Buhle, ‘From a Biographer’s Notebook: The Field of C.L.R. James Scholarship,’ in Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain (eds.), C.L.R. James; His Intellectual Legacies, (Amherst, 1995), p. 449.

[379] Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically, p. 184. Alex Lichtenstein, ‘George Rawick’s “From Sundown to Sunup” and the Dialectic of Marxian Slave Studies, Reviews in American History, Vol. 24, No. 4, (1996).

[380] Jack Fuller, ‘The new workerism; the politics of the Italian autonomists [1980],’ International Socialism, 92, (2001).

[381] Chamsy El-Ojeili, ‘Book Review: “Many Flowers, Little Fruit”? the Dilemmas of Workerism,’ Thesis Eleven, 79, (2004), pp. 114–5. After they left the official Trotskyist movement, the Johnson- Forest Tendency in their newspaper Correspondence noted that ‘From the stories we get everyday from the shops, we can see a new form of struggle emerging. It never seems to be carried to its complete end, yet its existence is continuous. The real essence of this struggle and its ultimate goal is: a better life, a new society, the emergence of the individual as a human being... This is the struggle to establish here and now a new culture, a workers’ culture. It is this that we must be extremely sensitive to. We must watch with an eagle eye every change or indication of the things that these changes reflect.’

[382] For my discussion of James’s failed attempt to build a ‘Marxist Group’ in Britain during the tumult of 1956 after he was forced to leave McCarthyist America in 1953, see Christian H0gsbjerg, ‘Beyond the Boundary of Leninism? C.L.R. James and 1956,’ Revolutionary History, Vol. 9, No. 3, (2006).

[383] George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (1997), p.320.

[384] Here ‘revolutionary syndicalism’ is in accordance with that defined by Marcel van der Linden, in its ‘broadest sense’ of ‘all revolutionary, direct-actionist’ organizations. (p.182) This definition naturally includes the French had Spanish movements but also the IWW. This is not to gloss over the significant ideological differences that did exist and that played an important part in syndicalists’ outlooks and relations in the Durham coalfield as elsewhere (see below). Marcel van der Linden, ‘Second thoughts on revolutionary syndicalism,’ Labor History Review, 63 (2) (1998), pp.182–3.

[385] David Howell, ‘Taking Syndicalism Seriously,’ Socialist History, 16 (2000), p.27. For international studies, see Ralph Darlington, Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism. An International Comparative Analysis (Ashgate, 2008); M. van der Linden and W. Thorpe (eds), Revolutionary Syndicalism; An International Perspective (1990); Wayne Thorpe, ‘The Workers Themselves ’: Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labor, 1913–1922 (Dordrecht, 1989).

[386] Richard Price, ‘Contextualizing British Syndicalism, c.1907-c.1920, Labor History Review, 63 (3) (1998), p.261.

[387] Durham Chronicle, 26 July 1912.

[388] However, the remaining 25 collieries (with 23% of miners), which tended to be located nearer the coast and have the deepest and thickest coal seams, worked a three-shift system for hewers. W.R. Garside, The Durham Miners, 1919–1960 (George Allen & Unwin, 1971), pp.19–26; B. McCormick and J.E. Williams, ‘The Miners and the Eight-Hour day, 1863–1910,’ The Economic History Review, 12 (2) (1959), pp.222–238.

[389] Durham miner Will Lawther described in some detail the arduous working day of his mother, and the average Durham housewife. See Newcastle Journal, 14 March 1955.

[390] C. Marshall, ‘Levels of Industrial Militancy and the Political Radicalization of the Durham Miners, 1885–1914’ (MA Thesis, Durham University, 1976), pp.311–313.

[391] A.W. Purdue, ‘The ILP in the North-east,’ in D. James, T. Jowitt and K. Laybourn (eds.), The Centennial History of the Independent Labor Party. A Collection of Essays (1992), pp.35–42. Will Lawther recalled that the ‘Non-conformist tradition was strong in our family and went to chapel as a matter of course.’ In later life, Lawther was a convinced atheist. Newcastle Journal, 8 March 1955; Smith, ‘Obituary Article,’ p.27. See also R. Moore, ‘Methodism and the Working Classes,’ Bulletin of the North-east Group for the Study of Labor History, 3 (1969) pp.7–9; R. Moore, Pitmen, Preachers and Politics (Cambridge, 1974).

[392] Durham Chronicle, 18 August 1911; 1 September 1911; 8 September 1911; 7 June 1912; 26 July 1912; 18 October 1912; C. Marshall, ‘Levels of Industrial Militancy and the Political Radicalization of the Durham Miners, 1885–1914’ (MA Thesis, Durham University, 1976), pp.92–95, 99–100, 310–311.

[393] Marshall, ‘Industrial Militancy,’ pp.334–335.

[394] The peculiar working practices in the north-east pits provoked deep disagreement over the 8-hour day among the miners’ unions, which had kept the north-east miners aloof from the Miners’ Federation (MFGB) before 1908. (The DMA had affiliated briefly in 1892, but did not support an MFGB strike in 1893 and so was expelled and remained outside for the next 15 years). Marshall, ‘Industrial Militancy,’ pp.24–26.

[395] David Egan, ‘The Miners’ Next Step,’ Labor History Review, 38 (1979), p.10.

[396] H. Pelling, A History of British Trade Unions (5^th edition, London, 1992) p.130.

[397] Challinor, British Bolshevism, p.74; Chris Williams, Capitalism Community and Conflict. The South Wales Coalfield 1898–1947 (Cardiff, 1998); H. Francis and D. Smith, The Fed. A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (Cardiff, 1998) and R. Page Arnot, South Wales Miners to 1914 (1967).

[398] For De Leon see Stephen Coleman, Daniel De Leon (Manchester, 1990); L. Glen Seretan, Daniel De Leon, the Odyssey of an American Marxist (New York, 1979).

[399] For the IWW see Melvyn Dubofsky and Joseph McCartin, We Shall be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Illinois, 2000); Verity Burgman, Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The IWW in Australia (Melbourne, 1996); Norman Caulfield, ‘Wobblies and Mexican workers in Mining and Petroleum, 1905–1924,’ International Review of Social History, 40 (1995), pp.51–75; Salvatore Salerno, Red November, Black November: Culture and Community in the Industrial Workers of the World (Albany, 1989), pp.69–90; Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies: The Story of Syndicalism in the United States (New York, 1967); Ferd W. Thompson and Patrick Murfin, The IWW: Its First Seventy Years, 1905–1975 (Chicago, 1976). See also Daniel De Leon, “Syndicalism“, first published in the Daily People, 3 August 1909 at http://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/190973.htm (Accessed June 2009).

[400] Max Beer, A History of British Socialism (2001), p.392. For a history of the SLP see Ray Challinor, The Origins of British Bolshevism (1977); for the SDF see Martin Crick, The History of the Social- Democratic Federation (Edinburgh, 1994).

[401] See William White Craik, The Central Labor College, 1909–29: A Chapter in the History of Adult Working-class Education (1964); Geoff Andrews, Hilda Kean and Jane Thompson, Ruskin College: Contesting Knowledge, Dissenting Politics (1999); John Atkins, Neither Crumbs Nor Condescension: The Central Labor College, 1909–1915 (Aberdeen, 1981); John McIlroy, ‘Two Tales About Crisis and Corruption at the Central Labor College, Labor History Review, 71 (1) (2007), pp.69–93.

[402] G.D.H. Cole, The Common People 1746–1946 (1946), p.484.

[403] David Egan, ‘The Miners’ Next Step,’ Labor History Review, 38 (1979), p.11.

[404] Challinor, British Bolshevism, p118, 121.

[405] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.38. For more on Morris see David Goodway, Anarchist seeds beneath the snow: left-libertarian thought and British writers from William Morris to Colin Ward (Liverpool University Press, 2006), pp.15–34.

[406] See Tom Mann, Tom Mann ’s Memoirs: With a preface by Ken Coates (1967); Chushichi Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, 1856–1941: The Challenges of Labor (Oxford, 1991); Joseph White, Tom Mann (Manchester, 1991); Geoff Brown, ‘Tom Mann and Jack Tanner and International Revolutionary Syndicalism, 1910–1920,’ Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labor History, 27 (1973), pp.19–22.

[407] Holton, British Syndicalism, pp.114–6; Challinor, British Bolshevism, pp.95–6.

[408] For discussion of various aspects of The Miners’ Next Step see Howell, ‘Taking Syndicalism Seriously,’ pp.36–42; Dave Douglass, Introduction in The Miners ’ Next Step [reprinted with introduction] (Doncaster, 1991), pp.1–6; D. Egan, ‘The Unofficial Reform Committee and the Miners ’ Next Step\ Llafur 2(3), (1978), pp.64–80; K. Davies, ‘Rival Prophets? William Ferris Hay, Noah Ablett and the Debate Over Working-class Political Action in the South Wales coalfield, 1910–1914,’ Llafur 3&4, (1999), pp.89–100; D. Egan, ‘“A Cult of their Own”: Syndicalism and the Miners’ Next Step,’ in A. Campbell, N. Fishman and D. Howell (eds), Miners, Unions and Politics, 1910–1947 (Aldershot, 1996), pp.13–33.

[409] The Miners ’ Next Step, 1912 Reprinted with introduction by Dave Douglass (Doncaster, 1991), p.30.

[410] The Miners ’ Next Step, 1912, p.31.

[411] The Miners ’ Next Step, 1912, p.16.

[412] The Miners ’ Next Step, 1912, p.16.

[413] The Miners’ Next Step, 1912, p.17.

[414] The Miners ’ Next Step, passim; Joseph White, ‘Syndicalism in a mature industrial setting; the case of Great Britain,’ in van der Linden and Thorpe, Revolutionary Syndicalism, p.112.

[415] G. Walker, George Harvey: The Conflict Between the Ideology of Industrial Unionism and the Practice of its Principles in the Durham Coal field (MA Thesis, Ruskin College, 1982), pp.36–39.

[416] The Miners ’ Next Step, p.13.

[417] The Miners’ Next Step, p.21.

[418] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.87.

[419] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.121; White, ‘Syndicalism,’ p.109.

[420] White, ‘Syndicalism,’ pp.109–110; John Caldwell, Guy A. Aldred (1886–1963) (Glasgow, 1966).

[421] See E.P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (Stanford, 1976); A.L. Morton (ed), The Political Writings of William Morris (1973) and J. Callaghan, Socialism in Britain (Oxford, 1990).

[422] G. Pattison, ‘Anarchist Influence in the Durham Coalfield Before 1914,’ The Raven, 11 (3:3) (1990), p.239; Quail, Slow Burning Fuze, pp.250–4; Nigel Todd, Roses and Revolutionists: The Story of the Clousden Hill Free Communist and Cooperative Colony, 1894—1902 (1986). See also H. Shpayer- Makov, ‘The Reception of Peter Kropotkin in Britain, 1886–1917,’ Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 19 (2) (1987), pp.373–390.

[423] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.142.

[424] John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuze: the Lost History of British Anarchists (1978), p.255.

[425] The Industrial Syndicalist, 1 (9), March 1911 in Geoff Brown, The Industrial Syndicalist (Nottingham, 1974), pp.314–15; Ray Challinor, ‘Jack Parks, Memories of a Militant,’ Bulletin of the North-east Group for the Study of Labor History, 9 (1975), pp.34–38 (for Harvey’s early life see pp.34–37); Challinor, British Bolshevism, p.116; Dave Douglass, ‘The Durham Pitman,’ in Raph Samuel (ed.), Miners, Quarrymen and Salt Workers (1977), pp.286–287.

[426] Newcastle Journal, 8 March 1955; 10 March 1955. See also Daily Herald, 15 September 1948; R. Smith, ‘Obituary Article: Sir William Lawther,’ Bulletin of the North-east Group for the Study of Labor History, 10 (1976), pp.27–8; J.F. Clarke, ‘An Interview with Sir Will Lawther,’ Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labor History, 18 (1969), p.20. For more on the socio-political conditions in the Northumberland coalfield see B. Williamson, Class, Culture and Community. A Biographical Study of Social Change in Mining (1982).

[427] Newcastle Journal, 11 March 1955; 15 March 1955. Still, he had thus far trod a path that many young miners followed at the time, from reading Blatchford to activity in the nascent ILP. For example, Manny Shinwell, a contemporary of Lawther’s, and later MP for the mining constituency of Seaham in county Durham was also ‘converted’ by Blatchford. Emmanuel Shinwell, Lead With The Left (1981) pp.33–34.

[428] Newcastle Journal, 15 March 1955.

[429] The vote that elected Lawther was, he claimed, one of the first ballots to take place in the Durham coalfield of lodge officials, who had been elected hitherto by a show of hands. Newcastle Journal, 11 March 1955.

[430] Newcastle Journal, 11 March 1955; 15 March 1955; Lawther’s Notebook of Economics Lectures, October 1911- July 1912 and Sociology Lectures, October 1911-July 1912 (both in possession of the late Jack Lawther); Smith, ‘Obituary article,’ pp.28–29, 33; Douglass, ‘The Durham Pitman,’ p.288; Clarke, ‘Lawther Interview,’ pp.14, 19.

[431] Smith, ‘Obituary Article,’ p.33.

[432] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.169.

[433] Smith, ‘Obituary article,’ p.29.

[434] Newcastle Journal, 17 March 1955.

[435] Durham Chronicle, 31 May 1912; Blaydon Courier, 1 June 1912.

[436] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912. Noah Ablett the same case debates in South Wales. See Document; ‘Socialism and Syndicalism: the Welsh Miners Debate, 1912,’ Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labor History, 30 (1975), pp.22–37.

[437] The Miners ’ Next Step, passim; Joseph White, ‘Syndicalism in a mature industrial setting; the case of Great Britain,’ in van der Linden and Thorpe, Revolutionary Syndicalism, p.112.

[438] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912.

[439] Nevertheless, it is quite clear that, contrary to Church and Outram’s claims, De Leon’s industrial unionist ideas and those of the syndicalists had a significant influence on Lawther. Church and Outram, Strikes and Solidarity, p.68.

[440] Holton, British Syndicalism, pp.142–3.

[441] Blaydon Courier, 25 January 1913.

[442] Blaydon Courier, 18 October 1913.

[443] For example, when addressing an anarchist conference in Newcastle in April 1914 (Newcastle Chronicle, 13 April 1914). While Lawther tended to use the simple term ‘anarchist’ to describe his politics at the time and when writing about it in 1955 (rather than ‘syndicalist’ or ‘anarcho- syndicalist’), he was clearly a syndicalist as well.

[444] Freedom, September 1913; Blaydon Courier, 20 September 1913.

[445] Blaydon Courier, 18 October 1913.

[446] Very reminiscent of Morris’ rhetoric was, for example, Lawther’s comment in 1914 that ‘Anarchists believed that any movement which aimed at freeing the worker must carry out its propaganda not at the doss house in Westminster but at work and where work was.’ (Newcastle Chronicle, 13 April 1914).

[447] Smith, ‘Obituary Article,’ p.28.

[448] Holton, British Syndicalism, pp.142–3; Geoff Brown, ‘Tom Mann and Jack Tanner and International Revolutionary Syndicalism, 1910–1920,’ Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labor History, 27 (1973), pp.19–22. See also Nina Fishman, ‘Tanner, Frederick John Shirley [Jack],’ in Dictionary of National Biography (accessed online 3 December 2008).

[449] Newcastle Journal, 16 March 1955. Davison had a vast estate in north Wales to which the Lawthers went in later life. Lawther’s memory here conflicted with accounts in Turnbull and Ward that claim Lawther met Davison whilst at Central Labor College. Les Turnbull, Chopwell’s Story (Newcastle, n.d.); A. Ward, ‘Red or Salmon: Chopwell’ (BA Dissertation, Ruskin College, 1987).

[450] Colin Harding, ‘George Davison,’ in John Hannavy (ed.) Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-century Photography (2008), pp.387–388. Harding claimed that Davison was ‘more of a Christian socialist than an anarchist in the Marxist sense [sic.].’ (p.388).

[451] Quail, Slow Burning Fuze, p.254; Atkins, Crumbs nor Condescension, p.63.

[452] Challinor, British Bolshevism, p.117.

[453] Both Walker and Dave Douglass commented Harvey’s impressive writing style. G. Walker, ‘George Harvey and Industrial Unionism,’ Bulletin of the North-east Group for the Study of Labor History, 17 (1983) p.21; Douglass, ‘The Durham Pitman,’ p.290.

[454] Evening Chronicle, 7 November 1912. Harvey’s pamphlet mistakenly claimed that it was another Northumberland Liberal MP, Thomas Burt, who received the £260 and not Fenwick.

[455] Durham Record Office, D/DMA 12a, Wilson’s Monthly circular No.193, January 1912.

[456] Quail, Slow Burning Fuze, pp.278–279. Smith and Saville both mistakenly claimed that Lawther was two years in Central Labor College. Craik and Atkins, however, were correct. Newcastle Journal, 16 March 1955; Craik, Central Labor College p.116; Atkins, Crumbs nor Condescension, pp.62, 65, 67; Smith, ‘Obituary article,’ p.29; John Saville, ‘Lawther, Sir William,’ in Dictionary of National Biography (accessed online 3 December 2008).

[457] Freedom, July 1913.

[458] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.169. Mann had lived in Newcastle as an SDF organizer and visited the mining villages of Durham and Northumberland in 1887. Mann, Memoirs, pp.46–47; Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, pp.26–28. See also Richard Fox, Jim Larkin: The Rise of the Underman (1957); Padraig Yeates, Lockout: Dublin 1913 (2000); W. Moran, ‘The Dublin Lockout, 1913, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labor History, 27 (1973), pp.10–16.

[459] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912; 25 January 1913; 20 September 1913; 18 October 1913; Durham Chronicle, 24 January 1913; Freedom, September 1913.

[460] Smith, ‘Obituary Article,’ p.33; Church and Outram, Strikes and Solidarity, p.68.

[461] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.169.

[462] Freedom, July 1913.

[463] Freedom, September 1913.

[464] On the ‘Big meeting’ See Beynon and Austrin, Masters and Servants, pp.211–218.

[465] Freedom, May 1914, Evening Chronicle, 13 April 1914.

[466] Paul Avrich, The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States (2005), p.263.

[467] The Herald of Revolt, February 1913.

[468] Walker, ‘George Harvey,’ p.21.

[469] Evening Chronicle, 7 November 1912; Newcastle Journal, 8 November 1912.

[470] Given this, it was odd for Holton to remark that Harvey had no standing in the DMA. While a position on the Executive Committee would have indicated standing in the central union, his checkweighman post was of great status in the locality. Holton, British Syndicalism, p.113.

[471] Durham Chronicle, 15 November 1912. The Durham Chronicle still provided several lines on the main principles of the new organization; that the working-class must emancipate itself through its own efforts; must own its own press; the ballot is only useful when backed up by industrial organization, and that industrial organization must form the basis of the mechanism for future society.

[472] Evening Chronicle, 7 November 1912.

[473] Evening Chronicle, 7 November 1912.

[474] Labor History Archive and Study Center, Manchester (LHASC), CP/CENT/PERS/1/01, Tom Aisbitt biography by Horace Green.

[475] See Lewis H. Mates, The Spanish Civil War and the British Left: Political Activism and the Popular Front (I.B. Tauris, 2007). passim.

[476] Tyne and Wear Archives Service [TWAS], T148/1 Copy letters, Superintendent at Felling to Chief Constable of Durham, 11 June 1914 (p.367) and 10 July 1914 (p.451) (I am indebted to Kevin Davies for drawing my attention to these files).

[477] TWAS, T148/1, Copy letter, 27 December 1913 (p.71).

[478] Freedom, May 1914.

[479] TWAS, T148/1 Copy letter, 27 December 1913 (p.71).

[480] Newcastle Journal, 15 March 1955

[481] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912; Durham Chronicle, 20 June 1913.

[482] The Spur, Vol.1 No.7, December 1914; Vol.1 No.8, February 1915; Blaydon Courier, 11 March 1916; 3 June 1916; 30 September 1916; Newcastle Journal, 17 March 1955; Trade Films Collection, Gateshead, LAW1, Will Lawther letter to Eddie Lawther, 23 April 1917; John Callaghan, The Labor Party and Foreign Policy: a History (2007), p.27. See Ray Challinor, ‘Jimmy Stewart and his Revolting Children,’ Bulletin of the North-east Group for the Study of Labor History, 17 (1983) pp.8–12 and also M. Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, 1914–1945: the Defining of a Faith (Oxford, 1980) and Bertrand Russell, Richard Rempel and Louis Greenspan, The No-Conscription Fellowship: Pacifism and Revolution, 1916–18 (1995).

[483] Roy A. Church and Quentin Outram, Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 18891966 (2002), pp.62, 68.

[484] John Saville, ‘Will Lawther,’ in J. Bellamy and J. Saville, Dictionary of Labor Biography Vol. VII (1984), p.141; Smith, ‘Obituary Article,’ p.29.

[485] White, ‘Syndicalism,’ p.110.

[486] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.169.

[487] Holton, British Syndicalism, pp.117–9.

[488] In 1911, Lawther met, among others, the American trade unionist Dan Tobin at the TUC annual conference in Newcastle. Newcastle Journal, 11 March 1955.

[489] Walker, ‘Harvey thesis,’ passim; Douglass, ‘The Durham Pitman,’ p.288; Challinor, ‘Jack Parks,’ p.37; Challinor, British Bolshevism, pp.116–118.

[490] John Stevenson and Chris Cook, The Slump (1977), p.135; Beynon and Austrin, Masters and Servants, p.353.

[491] Newcastle Journal, 16 March 1955.

[492] Beynon and Austrin, Masters and Servants, p.338; Smith, ‘Obituary article,’ p.29; Saville, ‘Lawther.’

[493] Challinor, British Bolshevism, p.117.

[494] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912.

[495] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912; Dubofsky and McCartin, We Shall be All, p.118.

[496] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912.

[497] Challinor, British Bolshevism, pp.120–1.

[498] Beer, British Socialism, p.392.

[499] Brown (introduction), Industrial Syndicalist, p.19. The only context in which Page Arnot (South Wales Miners to 1914 (1967), p.376) mentioned Harvey was in his denunciations of Mann as a ‘false prophet.’

[500] Challinor, British Bolshevism, p.85.

[501] The Herald of Revolt, February 1913.

[502] Freedom, September 1913.

[503] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912.

[504] See, for example, The Herald of Revolt, February 1913.

[505] Durham Chronicle, 14 August 1926.

[506] Evening Chronicle, 7 November 1912.

[507] The newspaper report refers to a ‘Mr. G. Harvey of Handon Hold lodge,’ who is almost certain to have been George Harvey. Durham Chronicle, 12 April 1912.

[508] Durham Chronicle, 5 December 1913.

[509] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912; 25 January 1913.

[510] See Mates, Spanish Civil War, passim.

[511] Holton, British Syndicalism, p.119.

[512] Challinor, British Bolshevism, pp.118–121.

[513] For evidence of this see the report of the October 1912 conference in Chopwell.

[514] It is worth noting that Leszek Kolakowski also ranks Sorel highly in comparison with other Marxists: ‘As a writer he stood far above the orthodox Marxists, but he had insufficient command over his talent’ (1981: 153).

[515] Mariátegui is perhaps the only major Marxist writer to consistently champion Sorel, whom he does not hesitate to mention in the same breath as Lenin and Marx (see, e.g., 1994: 261; 1318).

[516] Significantly, many of the commentators who maintain that Sorel’s thought lends itself to reactionary or fascistic uses, or that Sorel himself was essentially a right-wing thinker, furnish very little argument to support their claim. For some examples of this tendency to casually link Sorel to the Right (or as much to the Right as to the Left), see Woodcock 1962: 323; Horowitz 1964b: 592; Lichtheim 1971: 116; Joll 1980: 194; and Marshall 1993: 442.

[517] What is more, there are entries for Sorel in various reference works on Marxism (e.g., Jennings 1983 and Gorman 1985), and Kolakowski devotes a chapter to Sorel in his Main Currents of Marxism (1981), even though he believes that Sorel is a Marxist only ‘in a very loose sense’ (14). McLellan (1998), however, mentions Sorel on only one page (193), and merely in order to register his influence on Gramsci.

[518] ‘So Proudhonian in inspiration’ (1999: 292) is how Sorel himself characterizes the Reflections on Violence in his ‘In Defense of Lenin,’ an essay written in 1919 and added to the fourth (French) edition of the Reflections as an appendix.

[519] ‘But one must always bear in mind that Sorel was really no Marxist, but a Proudhonist’ (Lichtheim 1971: 113). Coming from Lichtheim, this can hardly be taken as praise. ‘What he [Proudhon] really represented,’ writes Lichtheim elsewhere, ‘was a fusion of backwoods barbarism with the mental chaos typical of the autodidact’ (Lichtheim 1973: 427). In any event, it is worth noting that the Comintern likewise considered Sorel a ‘Proudhonist.’ As Carr (1962) notes, ‘After Sorel died the Communist International, the official journal of Comintern, opened its columns to a lengthy, if critical, appreciation of this ‘reactionary petty-bourgeois Proudhonist and anarcho-syndicalist’ who had rallied to the defense of the proletarian revolution’ (162–3).

[520] Somewhat incongruously, Horowitz also characterizes Sorel as a ‘modern-day’ anarchist in a subsequent chapter in the same work (1964b: 592). In any case, in his 1961 book on Sorel, Radicalism and the Revolt against Reason, Horowitz also describes Sorel as an adherent of anarchism (160).

[521] Roger Scruton also effectively assimilates Sorel’s thought to anarchism, for he describes Sorel’s project as an attempt to synthesize syndicalist and anarchist ideas (1984: 456). For his part, Lenin cites one of Sorel’s texts in a brief paragraph listing works that offer ‘a critique of Marx from the point of view of anarchism,’ but refers to Sorel himself as a ‘syndicalist’ (1974a: 91). In any case, just as some Marxists dispute Sorel’s Marxist credentials, some anarchists and writers sympathetic to anarchism tend to minimize Sorel’s affinities with the anarchist tradition. For example, in his history of anarchism, George Woodcock writes that Sorel’s ‘place in anarchist history is peripheral’ (1962: 323) and scarcely discusses Sorel’s ideas. Similarly, Peter Marshall devotes only two (ill-informed) paragraphs to Sorel in his encyclopedic survey of anarchist thought (1993: 442). Both Woodcock and Marshall appear to believe that their extremely cursory treatment of Sorel is justified in light of Sorel’s apparently negligible influence on anarchist thinkers and activists (which proves especially odd in Woodcock’s case, since the subtitle of his book is ‘A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements’ [emphasis added]). Had Woodcock and Marshall taken more of an interest in the actual content of Sorel’s theories, presumably they would have seen fit to accord Sorel more space in their respective histories.

[522] I should perhaps emphasize that I am not saying that Sorel himself made any such claim, for he did not, at least to my knowledge.

[523] Unlike the references to other texts given in the body of essay, all references to the Reflections (including the appendixes) will contain the page numbers alone.

[524] Sorel goes on: ‘to meet with insults the homilies of the defenders of human fraternity and to respond by blows to the advances of the propagators of social peace....’

[525] In short: ‘The day when the bosses perceive that they have nothing to gain by works which promote social justice or by democracy, they will understand that they have been badly advised by the people who persuaded them to abandon their trade of creators of productive forces for the noble profession of educators of the proletariat’ (77–78).

[526] Cf. p. 251. Sorel also claims that insofar as concessions are granted to the workers, a society will find itself in a state of economic decline or decadence—which he distinguishes from a period of economic crisis (127)—when the revolution finally occurs (79–80). To the extent that economic decline implies a loss of certain gains achieved in advanced societies (gains that we identify with civilization), violence can be said to prevent a lapse into (relative) barbarism in this sense, too. It is worth pointing out that this claim is far less plausible than Sorel’s main thesis: while significant concessions from employers may very well sap or erode workers’ will to revolution, it seems unlikely that these concessions will inevitably contribute to economic decline. Indeed, employers often choose to offer certain benefits to their workers on the assumption that these concessions will improve morale among their employes, and therefore raise productivity.

[527] ‘[M]en who are participating in great social movements always picture their coming action in the form of images of battle in which their cause is certain to triumph. I propose to give the name of “myths” to these constructions... ’ (20). As I note below, ‘Marx’s catastrophic revolution’ (Ibid.) is, for Sorel, one such myth.

[528] Kolakowski also provides an illuminating characterization of Sorel’s conception of myth: ‘Its value is. [as] a force inspiring and organizing the militant consciousness of a self-contained group.... Only by means of a myth can a fighting group maintain its solidarity, heroism, and the spirit of self-sacrifice’ (1981: 160).

[529] ‘[T]he proletarian general strike. awakens in the depth of the soul a sentiment of the sublime proportionate to the conditions of a gigantic struggle’ (159). For a similarly rhapsodic characterization of the revolutionary general strike, and strikes generally, see 118.

[530] Sorel himself stresses, however, that he is by no means a slavish or dogmatic follower of Marx (see, e.g., 171), and that ‘the new school does not in the least feel itself bound to admire the illusions, the faults and the errors of the man who did so much to work out revolutionary ideas’ (172; italics in the original).

[531] On the material preconditions for socialism and the philosophy of history see 128, 73, 80 and 129; on the importance of class struggle, see 85, 34, 182 and 126; as regards the state, see 18, 161 and 30; on the question of utopias and utopianism, see 28–29,129, 224, 118–9 and 132; regarding ‘the primacy of production,’ see 138; on the nature and desirability of socialist revolution, see 155, 126 and 140; concerning the stated conception of socialist society, see 155, 238 and 171; and as regards the principle of proletarian self-emancipation, see 32. Some of these passages also contain more general statements of sympathy with Marx’s views, i.e., comments that express Sorel’s embrace of Marx without referring to any specific topic or thesis. If references to Marx and Marxism abound in the Reflections on Violence, references to anarchism and anarchists are, by contrast, relatively few in number, and for the most of an incidental character.

[532] ‘[T]he official socialists,’ remarks Sorel, ‘.wish to admire in Marx that which is not Marxist’ (172).

[533] It is no surprise, then, that in 1921 the Comintern should have instructed the French Communist Party to ‘criticize in a friendly by also clear and firm manner those anarcho-syndicalist tendencies which reject the dictatorship of the proletariat. ’ (Adler 1983: 282).

[534] For some typically caustic remarks on the failings of parliamentary socialism, see 67–8; 111; and 154.

[535] It is worth recalling that Bakunin himself was a proponent of the general strike (see, e.g., 1985: 149150), and that his views on the value of strikes more generally sound like an anticipation of Sorel (see, e.g., 1972: 304–307). It is likewise worth recalling here that according to Emma Goldman syndicalism constitutes ‘the economic expression of Anarchism’ (1972: 68).

[536] Goldman mentions Sorel in her essay ‘Syndicalism: Its Theory and Practice’ (which echoes some of the themes found in Reflections on Violence), as does Rocker in his classic work Anarcho-Syndicalism. Yet both authors refer to Sorel merely to counter the notion that the essential ideas of revolutionary syndicalism derive from his writings (see Goldman 1972: 65; 67, and Rocker 1989: 134).

[537] One might also convey the anarcho-Marxist tenor of Sorel’s work in negative terms, so to speak, and this is in effect Kolakowski’s approach: ‘his [Sorel’s] criticism of Marxist orthodoxy has much in common with that of the anarchists. He attacks anarchism from a Marxist standpoint, yet on some points he criticizes Marx from the angle of Bakunin or Proudhon’ (1981: 170).

[538] At least one important Marxist thinker, Mariátegui, explicitly claims that Sorel’s syndicalism is consistent with Marxism (1994: 206). Unfortunately, Mariategui does not try to defend this claim.

[539] Berlin puts the point as follows: ‘Sorel rejects everything in Marx that seems to him political—his notion of the workers’ party, his theory of, and practical measures for, the organization of the revolution, his determinism, above all the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Sorel regards as a sinister recrudescence of the worst elements of repressive Jacobinism. Even the anarchist classless society with which true human history is to begin is virtually ignored by Sorel’ (1980: 312). For his part, Kolakowski explicitly links Sorel’s ‘anti-political’ orientation to anarchism: ‘he shared with the anarchists their basic premise of the need to do away with all state institutions and their refusal to take part in parliamentary life or to support “political socialism”’ (1981: 171).

[540] ‘Both Marx and Engels had asserted the primacy of the political struggle over the economic. Trades unions, in their estimation, were essentially defensive organizations.... It became part of Marxist orthodoxy to argue that long before the exacting pre-conditions for a successful general strike could be realized, the electoral and political ascendancy of social democracy would render it redundant’ (Harding 1996: 68).

The separation of ‘the political’ and ‘the economic’ is of course in many ways quite artificial, little more, at bottom, than an analytical construct—and one that often serves ‘bourgeois’ interests (or at least bourgeois mystification), as Marxists rightly point out. Even so, the distinction does seem useful with respect to the kind of contrast that I wish to establish here.

[541] At least one well-informed commentator, E.H. Carr, is inclined to agree with Sorel: ‘Syndicalism is, in Sorel’s eyes, the true heir of Marxism. It is anti-political in two senses, both of them Marxist. In the first place it rejects the State, as Marx did and as most contemporary Marxists did not; it seeks not to capture the machinery of the State—much less to find places for socialist ministers in bourgeois governments— but to destroy it. Secondly, it asserts, as Marx did, the essential primacy of economics over politics. Political action is not class action: only economic action can be truly revolutionary. The syndicats, the trade unions, being not political parties but organizations of the workers, are alone capable of such action’ (1962: 157).

[542] According to the First International’s ‘Provisional Rules,’ drafted by Marx, ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves’ (Marx 1974: 82). In his ‘Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke, and Others,’ written in 1879, Marx reaffirms the paramount importance of this principle (1978a: 555), as does Engels in his ‘Preface’ to the 1888 English edition of the Communist Manifesto: ‘And as our notion from the very beginning [i.e., the years preceding the appearance of the Manifesto] was that “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.’ ’(1971, 136). Marx also cites the formulation from the ‘Provisional Rules’ (in a slightly modified form) in the ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’ (1978b: 532), written in 1875. For discussion of the principle of proletarian self-emancipation in Marx and Engels’ thought, see Draper 1971; 1977: 213–234; and 1978: 147–165.

[543] For a brief overview of some of the different attitudes toward strikes encountered within the history of Marxist thought, see Hyman 1983: 469–471. Summarizing the general attitude among Marxists, Harding writes, ‘For Marxists, the policy of the general strike was associated with the infancy of the labor movement’ (1996: 69). Sorel suggests, however, that the truth is actually the opposite of what, according to Harding, most Marxists believe: ‘Revolutionary syndicalism is not. as many believe. the first confused form of the working-class movement, which is bound in the end to free itself from this youthful error. It has been, on the contrary, the product of an improvement brought about by men who had just arrested a deviation towards bourgeois ideas’ (35).

[544] Harding (1996: 69) attributes this dictum to Marx himself, but does not provide a source for his claim. The phrase is normally attributed to German Social Democrat Ignaz Auer (1846–1907).

[545] Apocalypse is, according to Sorel, also an appropriate description: ‘Apocalypse.in reality corresponds perfectly to the general strike which, for revolutionary syndicalists, represents the advent of the new world to come’ (Sorel 1961: 251).

[546] The corollary of a view that we might call radical anti-substitutionism, this position has undoubtedly found more prominent Marxist adherents than any of the other three positions discussed here.

[547] Suzi (Susan) Weissman is the author of Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope, and Editor of The Ideas of Victor Serge, and Victor Serge: Russia Twenty Years After. She is on the editorial boards of Against the Current and Critique.

[548] He is identified as the Bard of the LO by Richard Greeman; the journalist of the LO by Ernest Mandel; the Historian of the LO by Susan Weissman.

[549] Memoirs, p. 34. Serge wrote a novel about the pre-war anarchist movement in France Les Hommes perdus which was confiscated in the Soviet Union. It has never been recovered.

[550] While recognizing that even the anarchist movement was populated with authoritarian figures, from Bakunin to Makhno, Serge saw the essence of anarchism as the absence of authority; but authoritarianism can exist among those who oppose authority. Serge, L’Anarchisme, unpublished essay [#8], written in the forties (no date provided), Serge archives.

[551] Serge archive, no date, archive essay #8.

[552] Ibid.

[553] Memoirs, p. 114.

[554] Ibid.

[555] Serge was referring to the revolution and civil war generation of Bolsheviks, those schooled in making a revolution and fighting for its survival.

[556] Victor Serge to Sidney Hook, 10 July 1943.

[557] Although the GPU (State Political Directorate) was transformed into the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in 1934, it was often still called the GPU.

[558] For a detailed discussion of their political differences see Susan Weissman, “Kronstadt and the Fourth International,” in The Serge-Trotsky Papers, Edited by David Cotterill, Pluto Press, 1994, pp. 150191.

[559] “I recalled, for use against Trotsky himself, a sentence of astounding vision which he had written in 1914 I think: ‘Bolshevism may very well be an excellent instrument for the conquest of power, but after that it will reveal its counter-revolutionary aspects....’ I came to the conclusion that our Opposition had simultaneously contained two opposing lines of significance. For the great majority ... it meant resistance to totalitarianism in the name of the democratic ideals expressed at the beginning of the Revolution; for a number of our Old Bolshevik leaders it meant, on the contrary, the defense of doctrinal orthodoxy which, while not excluding a certain tendency towards democracy, was authoritarian through and through. These two mingled strains had, between 1923 and 1928 surrounded Trotsky’s vigorous personality with a tremendous aura. If, in his exile from the USSR, he had made himself the ideologist of a renewed socialism, critical in outlook and fearing diversity less than dogmatism, perhaps he would have attained a new greatness.” Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 348–350.

[560] Serge’s thinking about post WWII economic and political development was shaped by the terrible experience of the twin totalitarianisms of fascism and Stalinism. The condition of humanity had been worsened by these regimes: the working class movement was deeply damaged by Fascism, and Stalinism threatened the fate of socialism everywhere. Neither labor militancy in the west nor the colonial revolution in the east raised his spirits so long as the Soviet Union was in a position to crush revolutionary movements to its left and channel the others into anti-imperialist national liberation struggles that would lead to an extension of Soviet totalitarianism, a far cry from socialism. See Victor Serge, Carnets, (Actes Sud, 1985), p. 181.

[561] “Necesidad de una renovacion del Socialismo,” Mundo, Libertad y Socialismo, Mexico, junio de 1943.

[562] “Pour un Renouvellement du Socialisme,” Masses/Socialisme et Liberte (no. 3, juin 1946).

[563] Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, 8 October 1945, Macdonald Papers, Yale University Library.

[564] 9/11, Hurricane Katrina 2005, financial meltdown 2008–9.

[565] For a fuller discussion, see Susan Weissman, “Disintegrating Democracy: From the Promise of the 1905 Soviet to Corrupt Democratic Forms,” Critique 41, April 2007, pp. 103–117.

[566] Carnets, 10 Dec. 1944, p. 182

[567] Workers individual rights have improved, winning protection from discrimination at work, but at the expense of union rights and protections — which have been eroded and often exist in name only. For a nuanced discussion of the relationship of rights consciousness to the labor movement (in the U.S.) see Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, (Princeton University Press, 2002), chapter 5.

[568] The colors red and black have concrete historical foundations of symbols of political and social struggle, but we should not ignore the reductionism and even regimentation that such symbols may reinforce. To reduce the interplay of competing or converging political tendencies to physical properties is, in my estimation, too reminiscent of spectator sports and the emotional conditioning that characterize them.

[569] With Karl Mannheim, I would call “utopian” that which refers to the idea and will to realize a yet non existing but desirable condition founded upon the belief in the necessity and possibility of improvement, and opposed to the belief that what exists must be preserved against such attempts at fundamental change. See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia.

[570] This was not only the case in the U.S.S.R. During the last 1930s and 1940s, for example, the Communist Party of the U.S.A. called their orientation “twentieth-century Americanism.”

[571] Which is likely the reason Jack London named, in The Iron Heel (1907), his quintessential revolutionary Earnest Everhard.

[572] According to Sartre, “there is in fact an ‘evanescence’ of bad faith” that “vacillates continually between good faith and cynicism” belonging “to the kind of psychic structures which we might call metastable, it presents nonetheless an autonomous and durable form. It can even be the normal aspect of life for a very great number of people. A person can live in bad faith, which does not mean that he does not have abrupt awakenings to cynicism or to good faith, but which implies a constant and particular style of life.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel Barnes, New York, Washington Square Press, 1969 [1943], p. 90.

[573] Those evoked in homilies such as “The end justifies the means” or “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

[574] See, for example, Len De Caux, The Living Spirit of the Wobblies, New York, International Publishers, 1978, Philip S. Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World 1905–1917, New York, International Publishers, 1965, and Clancy Sigal, Going Away: A Report, A Memoir, New York, Carol and Graf Publishers, 1961.

[575] Jeunesse du socialisme libertaire, Marcel Riviere, Paris, 1959.

[576] Andres Nin, leader of the POUM, quoted by Rene Lefeuvre in his foreword to Andre and Dori Prudhommeaux’s Catalogne 1936–1937, Cahiers Spartacus n°6, March 1937.

[577] About Boris Souvarine, refer i.a.to Jean-Louis Panne, Boris Souvarine, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1993.

[578] Cercle communiste democratique, Declaration et statuts, Librairie du travail, Paris, 1931, quoted in Critique sociale, Les vies de Boris Souvarine, www.critique-sociale.info, 2008.

[579] On Monde, refer i.a.to Bernard Frederick, Confrontation entre Henri Barbusse et le Komintern, Fondation Gabriel Peri, 2006, and Guessler Normand, Henri Barbusse and his Monde (1928–1935), Journal of Contemporary History, 1976, 11.

[580] The Association des ecrivains et artistes revolutionnaires (AEAR), the French section of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers, will be launched in 1933.

[581] Otto Maschl (1898–1973). An Austrian Communist, he acts as a correspondent in Berlin for I’Humanite from 1921 to 1923 at the request of Boris Souvarine, then teaches economics in Moscow for the International until 1927, when he resigns.

[582] Hippolyte Etchebehere (1900–1936), an Argentine revolutionary, expelled from the Communist party in 1925 for his support of the Left opposition. Leader of a POUM militia column, he dies in August 1936 fighting Franco’s troops. His testimonial on the Nazis’ accession to power is still available (1933: la tragedie du proletariat allemand, Spartacus, Paris, 2003).

[583] 1894–1984. A typesetter, he’s an avid reader and learns Russian. During the First World War, he’s a member of the French military delegation to Russia. In 1918, he refuses to take part in military operations against the Soviets and joins the Groupe communiste frangais in Moscow. He is then employed during several years by the International and, an opponent to the regime, returns to France in 1927. After a year spent in opposition in the Communist party, he launches in Limoges a Union des travailleurs revolutionnaires.

[584] Angelo Tasca, one of the founding members of the Italian Communist party. Made a member of the Executive of the Communist International in 1929, he is expelled that same year. He was on the editorial board of Monde.

[585] Andre Ariat (1904–1983). A teacher, he had been a member of the Communist party, then in succession of Opposition groups, of the Cercle communiste Marx et Lenine, of the first Trotskyst groups and most recently of the Gauche communiste, with Alfred Rosmer and Kurt and Katia Landau.

[586] 1902–1968. He writes in Masses under the name Jean Cello. He will also use that of Andre Prunier.

[587] See Marie-Christine Bardouillet, La Librairie du Travail, Francois Maspero, Paris, 1977.

[588] Edouard Labin (1910–1982). A member of the Communist Youth, expelled in 1930; briefly a member of the Ligue communiste, he joins the Cercle communiste democratique. He becomes a member of the SFIO in 1934.

[589] Aaron Goldenberg (1896–1993). He attends the second congress of the Communist International as a delegate of the Socialist Youth, and then the fourth congress. Until 1928, he works for the Moscow Marx-Engels Institute and the International, in particular with D. Riazanov, B. Souvarine and V. Serge, and expresses his opposition to the prevailing policies. He then distances himself from the Communist party.

[590] Parti d’uniteproletarienne, born from the merger in 1930 of several groups of former Communist party members. It had a significant electoral influence in several cities.

[591] See i.a. Robert Mencherini, La liberation et les entreprises sous gestion ouvriere. Marseille 1944–1948. L’Harmattan, Paris, 1994.

[592] Ida Gilman (1901–1973). A Russian anarchist, she took part in Paris in the debate around the Platform. In 1938, she had submitted her Kronstadt Commune to the group of the Revolution proletarienne, which had not wanted to publish it, finding it too harsh on Trotsky.

[593] Gilles Martinet, Partis et mouvements dans la France nouvelle, Questions d’aujourd’hui n°35, Editions du Chene, Paris, 1945.

[594] David Rousset, Autour du Rassemblement democratique revolutionnaire», in Les Temps modernes n°36, Paris, 1948.

[595] Ibid.

[596] About the transformation of the Mouvement populaire des familles into the Mouvement de liberation du peuple, see Cahiers du GRMF (Groupement de recherche sur les mouvements familiaux), in particular issue n°9, 1995.

[597] 1944–2005. A member of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group, then of the PSU. His writings include Le luxembourgisme aujourd’hui, Spartacus, Paris, 1970; L’autogestiongeneralisee, Christian Bourgois, Paris, 1979; Rosa Luxemburg, la Rose rouge, Picollec, Paris, 2002; and, with Yvon Bourdet, De l’autogestion, Seghers, Paris, 1975.

[598] Comite pour L ’Autogestion Socialiste, a forum of the PSU, the Alliance marxiste revolutionnaire, the Centers d’initiative communiste (set-up by former Communist party members), Objectif socialiste, and nonparty movements such as La vie nouvelle and the Groupes d’action municipale (GAM).

[599] See contributions of the PSU’s “Courant communiste autogestionnaire,” or “courant ‘C,’” to its IXth, Xth et XIth congresses (1974, 1977 and 1979) or, for a synthetic approach, Andre Fontaine, Les socialismes: l’Histoire sans fin, Spartacus, Paris, 1992.

[600] The Alternatifs publish a periodical, Rouge et vert.

[601] This is why, and to this day, each book carries a chronological number.

[602] The list and description of available titles can be found on http://atheles.org/spartacus/livres/index.html

[603] Saul Newman, Unstable universalities:poststructuralism and radical politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 15.

[604] Todd May, The Political Theory ofPoststructuralist Anarchism (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 75.

[605] Saul Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan: anti-authoritarianism and the dislocation of power, p. 55.

[606] May, The Political Theory of Poststructuralist Anarchism, p. 60.

[607] The first conclusion is reached by Jesse Cohn, ‘What is Postanarchism “Post”?,’ Postmodern Culture 13(1) (2002) <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v013/13.1cohn.html>, last accessed 31 July, 2009, and Jesse Cohn and Shawn Wilbur, ‘What’s Wrong with Postanarchism?’

[608] An exception is Benjamin Franks, ‘Postanarchism: A critical assessment,’ Journal of Political Ideologies 12(2) (2007), 127–145, who while reviewing some of the common anarchist critiques of post-anarchism also offers a short defense of Marx and class politics (137).

[609] Todd May, for example, suggests that we should go ‘in the direction not of Marx’s writings, but in that of their legacy in political philosophy. It is Marxism, rather than Marx, that we must address.’ May, The Political Theory of Poststructuralist Anarchism, p. 18.

[610] Karl Marx ‘Theses on Feuerbach,’ in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works Volume 5 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), p. 4.

[611] Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan, pp. 13–14.

[612] Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 899.

[613] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Allen Lane, 1977), p. 138.

[614] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 26

[615] Etienne Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, trans. James Swenson (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 138.

[616] In his recent book on Jacques Ranciere, Todd May suggests that Iris Marion Young usefully argues that capitalism reduces politics to economics. He does not, however, acknowledge that this argument is made by Marx, instead dismissing Marx as an example of what Ranciere calls ‘metapolitics,’ i.e. the dissolution of politics into a nonpolitical realm (in Marx, the economy). See Todd May, The Political Thought of Jacques Ranciere: Creating Equality (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), pp. 28, 44–46.

[617] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), p. 379

[618] Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 91–92.

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