Ruth Kinna and Alex Prichard

Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!

Otto Von Bismarck[17]

This book is about two currents of ideas, anarchism and Marxism. It examines their complex interrelationship and mutual borrowings in history, theory and practice and it probes the limits and possibilities of cooperation by looking at the institutional and social contexts in which both heretical and orthodox expressions of these movements have operated. In presenting this collection, we have not attempted to fix the ideological content of either of these two currents but to show instead how this content has itself been shaped by a process of engagement, theoretical debate and political activity. To begin with definitions is to restart the long and wearisome tradition of demarcating difference and establishing doctrinal purity. This tradition has dominated in the past and its historical significance can hardly be underestimated, and we discuss it by way of introduction in order to contextualize the aims of the collection. But its practical effect has been to establish exclusive boundaries and to encourage a view that a politics of black and red is impossible, impractical or dangerous. The essays in this book suggest that such a politics might well be problematic, but that it nevertheless provides a welcome counter to sectarianism.

To turn, then, to the context: the history of European revolutionary socialism is usually told as a story of factionalism and dispute, and the politics of black and red — black being the color of anarchism, and red of communism — is usually understood as dysfunctional and oppositional. The antagonism at the core of the relationship is often traced back to 1871 when the collapse of the First International appeared to mark the neat division of socialism into Bakuninist and Marxist currents. Suggestions that the significant marker was earlier, in the 1840s, when Proudhon refused collaboration with Marx, tend to reinforce the importance of this later split: 1871 cemented the formation of an ideological divide that Marx and Proudhon’s mutual suspicion presaged.[18] Criticisms of Max Stirner, voiced since the 1890s — sometime after Marx and Engels sketched their critique of ‘Saint Max’ in The German Ideology – similarly bolstered the view that the political disputes that divided Marxists and anarchists were grounded in very different, perhaps irreconcilable, philosophical traditions, always latent in the socialist movement.

A second influential story of the relationship is the account promoted by Lenin and it consists of the view that the differences between Marxists and anarchists have been overstated: both groups of socialists are committed to the realization of a common end, they disagree only about the means of transformation. In the 1970s this case was advanced by the historian Eric Hobsbawm. The rejection of anarchism, he argued, had a number of dimensions, but its leading idea was that ‘[t]here is no difference between the ultimate objects of Marxists and anarchists, i.e. a libertarian communism in which exploitation, classes and the state will have ceased to exist.’[19] Hobsbawm attempted to explain the apparent tension between this theoretical accord and the actual history of the revolutionary socialist movement by showing how revolutionary Marxists — Marx, Engels and Lenin — combined a rejection of anarchist thought with benevolence towards anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movements. The agreement on ends reflected the shared practical experience of revolution, but it was also consistent with a firm denial of anarchist means to that end, and the theory that supported those means. His explanation implied a clear separation of ideas from practice in the development of ideology. Although Hobsbawm acknowledged the imprecision of ‘doctrinal, ideological and programmatic distinctions’ in rank-and-file movements, contrary to contemporary treatments of ideological formation, he failed to see how the ideas of ‘ideologists and political leaders,’ of both Marxist and anarchist varieties, were also shaped by political engagements and events — not just theory.[20] The result was to reinforce the principle of theoretical division whilst providing a positive account of Leninism that, for anarchists, was unpersuasive.

Hobsbawm’s elaboration of the apparent dovetailing of Marxist and anarchist positions points to a line of division that many anarchists have wanted to highlight — a third account of difference. This turns on the relationship between the means and ends of revolutionary struggle and the anarchist rejection of the idea that the transition from capitalism to socialism requires a period of transition in which state power is captured and used as an instrument of change, before ‘withering away.’[21] For anarchists, the adoption of such means necessarily compromises the ends of the revolution and it points to a model of socialist organization that most have rejected. Although he passed over the theoretical grounds of the anarchist complaints, Hobsbawm pinpointed precisely the nature of the concern: Marxists not only accepted the ‘withering away’ thesis[22] they also adopted a ‘firm belief in the superiority of centralization to decentralization or federalism and (especially in the Leninist version), to a belief in the indispensability of leadership, organization and discipline and the inadequacy of any movement based on mere “spontaneity.”’[23] From an apparent agreement about the ends of the revolution, Hobsbawm identified a combined package of ideas that was antithetical to anarchist thought and which, in parts and in whole, many self-identifying Marxists also rejected.[24]

A fourth story of the relationship between Marxism and anarchism relates to the relative significance of these two currents of thought. One version of this story focuses on practical activity, the other on emergence and reemergence, dominance and subservience. As to the first, the place of Marxism as the dominant current within socialism is sometimes assumed without qualification. Indeed, such has been the dominance of Marxism that recent histories of the Left simply conflate socialism with Marxism and ignore the anarchists completely.[25] Others assign anarchism little more than a footnote in a wider narrative of Marxist infighting and factionalism.[26] A second version of the poor relation thesis centers on the assessment of the relative intellectual merits of Marxist and anarchist ideas. Anarchism fares badly here, too. The blunt claim of Murray Bookchin’s essay ‘The Communalist Project’ is that anarchism ‘is simply not a social theory.’

Its foremost theorists celebrate its seeming openness to eclecticism and the liberatory effects of ‘paradox’ or even ‘contradiction,’ to use Proudhonian hyperbole. Accordingly, and without prejudice to the earnestness of many anarchistic practices, a case can made that many of the ideas of social and economic reconstruction that in the past have been advanced in the name of ‘anarchy’ were often drawn from Marxism.[27]

Bookchin’s evaluation is not untypical. As Graeber and Grubacic note, anarchism’s most distinctive contribution to socialism is often identified with revolutionary commitment. It is the passionate, idealistic heart to Marxism’s sober and realistic head. In a discussion of ‘small-a anarchists’ they note: ‘Marxism … has tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about revolutionary strategy. Anarchism has tended to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary practice … where Marxism has produced brilliant theories of praxis, it’s mostly been anarchists who have been working on the praxis itself.’[28]Although there is now talk of an ‘anarchist turn’ in radical political theory, it is not yet clear that anarchism’s relationship to Marxism has fundamentally altered.[29] Nor is it clear which Marxism the new Left today are turning from or which anarchism is it moving towards. The danger of ‘turns’ is that they reinforce existing, often caricatured, assumptions of difference and ossify identity. The reality is that the terms of debate have evolved and resist easy pigeon-holing, as the chapters in this volume testify.

The imbalance between Marxism and anarchism is also sometimes expressed through the language of emergence and reemergence. In this discourse, anarchism is treated as a somewhat juvenile expression of intermittent protest. The year 1968 is often referred to as a moment of rebirth for anarchism and the new Left.[30] Likewise, 1999 is a marker for the appearance of a new anarchistic ‘movement of movements’ and the reappearance of anarchism, now galvanized by the struggle for global justice.[31] At the height of the Paris évènements, Daniel Cohn-Bendit identified both the continuities and the important critical interchanges that these movements actually represented. His unusual formulation of ‘Leftism’ was based on an understanding of socialism as a continuous theoretical dispute which gave equal weight to opposing views: ‘Marx against Proudhon, Bakunin against Marx, Makhno against Bolshevism,’ and what Cohn-Bendit called the studentworkers’ movement against the ‘transformation and development of the Russian Revolution into a bureaucratic counter-revolution, sustained and defended by Communist Parties throughout the world.’[32] Moreover, Cohn- Bendit’s approach pointed to a process of political development based on continuous constructive critique: if Leftism was new, it borrowed from anarchism — anarchism had not reemerged, it was merely that new groups were only just discovering it. Yet Cohn-Bendit’s dialogic approach did not predominate and the sense that anarchism follows a phenix-like existence, albeit with a shorter life-cycle, is still powerful.

The dominance of Marxism over anarchism might be explained in a number of ways. The tendency to read a utopian prehistory back into scientific socialism and to tie revolutionary socialism tightly to the rise of an urban, industrialized working-class movement has undoubtedly played a role in sealing Marxism’s good reputation. The sense that anarchism was attractive to predominantly rural populations — though itself contestable — has encouraged a view that it was irrelevant to the modern world and attractive only to an uneducated and therefore theoretically unsophisticated audience. The inspiration that Marxism has provided for a range of socialist regimes and political parties also helps explain why anarchism has often been seen as Marxism’s poor relation. The working assumption of Donald Sassoon’s seminal study of European socialism was that the only socialist organizations to alter the trajectory of European society were the ‘traditional socialist parties’ (Communist and Social Democratic) which emerged from 1889. This blotted all sorts of revolutionary organizations out of socialist history, especially the anarchists, even though, as Tony Judt noted, the fringe groups that fell under Sassoon’s radar nevertheless exerted a significant (albeit unwelcome in his view) influence on socialist thought. Moreover, as recent research has confirmed, other mass movements — notably the syndicalist — occupied a pivotal place in many parts of the world.[33]

The approach to socialism that measures success in terms of a competitive struggle for power in the state naturally disadvantages anarchism, particularly since no anarchist ideology is likely to find the statist patrons that have sustained and nurtured nationalist, Marxist, religious and other ideological movements. The subordination of anarchism to Marxism in accounts of socialism also owes something to the way in which political ‘success’ and ‘defeat’ are estimated and understood. The defeat of the anarchist revolution in Spain in 1939 is sometimes interpreted as a symbol of the collapse of anarchism, both in theory and practice. For Hobsbawm it provided further proof of the ideological bankruptcy of anarchism and the ‘failure’ of the revolution itself, evidence of the inadequacy of anarchism as a practical goal.[34] George Woodcock’s view was not much different. In Anarchism, Woodcock argued that the ‘actual anarchist movement … stemmed from the organization and inspiration activities of Michael Bakunin in the 1860s’ and that it ‘ceased to have any real relevance in the modern world’ after the Spanish defeat.[35] The inability of the anarchists to stand up to Hitler, Stalin, Franco and Mussolini — practically alone — is judged as a weakness of ideology rather than of material capability. Admittedly, in the aftermath of 1968 Woodcock suggested that this had been an overly pessimistic judgment. However, its implication, which he accepted, was that anarchism was a mere tendency, a current of thought that was likely to receive only sporadic expression for it lacked institutional longevity.

Accounts of the relationship between anarchism and Marxism have helped to define and delimit the focus of critical study: anarchism is linked only to its nineteenth-century ‘fathers’ and Marxism tied tightly to Bolshevism, opening the way to charting Marxism’s rise through the Soviet regime and its satellites and the emergence of the composite doctrine, Marxism–Leninism, at the cost of say, Trotskyism, autonomism or other currents of ultra-Left dissent. Interest in party-political success and the analysis of practical activity in the state only extends this bias. Following the logic of this approach it is easy to see why the collapse of the Berlin Wall was widely treated as the beginning of the end for European Marxism and the dawn of ‘a new anarchism.’[36] Impressions such as these are today widely contested. Notions of ‘the old Left’ resonate in our imagination, while those who discover the antecedents of ‘the new Left’ find that these antecedents are often the same groups and people that populated ‘the old Left’ but who were marginalized or forgotten: the dissenters and heretics, but also often the acolytes or (self-appointed) vanguard. This book ought to help give more shape to this ideological morphology, but so much more remains to be done.

This reading of history leads to a similar delimitation in anarchist historical analysis. The twin claims that anarcho-syndicalism was the most important current in the anarchist movement and that it had its origins in Bakunin and his heirs, and can only be traced back to him, is one example.[37] An important consequence of the argument is that Proudhon’s influence, which was particularly strong in France, Spain, Switzerland and Russia, long before Marx sought his collaboration and for a good period after, is bypassed. As a result, the republicanism of Pí-y-Margall, the pluralism of G.D.H. Cole and Harold Laski, Tolstoy’s anarchism or the French tradition of ‘personalisme’ and pluralist syndicalism to give a few examples, appear anomalous in socialist traditions, and the currents of thought they developed and of which they were a part are stripped of integral aspects of their substance in efforts to force them into one or other ‘tradition’ of socialist thinking.[38]

Reviewing these traditional accounts of anarchism and Marxism here helps illuminate the subterranean trends in socialist thinking that have always given the lie to that easy dichotomy and helps us understand the complexity of the lines of division. Continual reference to the ‘anarchist core’ of contemporary activist movements, illuminated and developed at length by David Graeber elsewhere,[39] belies the explosion of alternative socialist groups in the post-cold war period that are neither red nor black but draw on the politics of both. Autonomists, Council Communists, open Marxists, the Zapatistas, primitivists, nowtopians and post-anarchists all share space with longer-established groups of anarchists and Marxists, Trotskyists and Leninists, sometimes within the fuzzy intellectual plurality of the Climate Camps and the horizontalism of the wider protest movements, often in specific labor struggles or revolutionary moments. The relationships between the groups that make up this contemporary kaleidoscope are by no means clear or uncontested.[40] Few of their members are perhaps aware of, and probably more are indifferent to, the equally messy history of the movements which preceded their own. Yet the leading contention of this book is that they have something to gain from reengaging with and reflecting on the past, on the complexity of socialist history and on the problems which previous generations of activists encountered. The drive to action and the mythological but ‘tainted history’ shared by anarchists and Marxists have ignited a desire for novelty and ingenuity, and a flourishing of revolutionary vitality. An understanding of the processes of ideological formation or ossification, of the ways in which ideas translate into and are transformed by practice, helps reveal the contestability of claims made about both traditions — about both the permanence of the past or the shape of the future. There is much to be gained from opening up this rich seam.

In mining it, this collection has three main aims that have been hinted at above but are worth stating clearly. The first is to challenge conventional accounts of socialist interrelations and reopen analysis of the relationship of Marxism to anarchism. This is to suggest that the ideological boundaries are far more complex, fluid and porous than these potted histories indicate; that the diversity of views within broadly anarchist and Marxist groups is wider than the alignment with key figures allows; and that the conceptual differences between socialists who identify with different currents of thought are more interesting and nuanced than the means-end dichotomy suggests. A second aim is to reconsider the overlaps and tensions between and within different Marxisms and anarchisms and highlight the plural forms that both main currents have taken since the end of the nineteenth century. The aim here is to begin to map a more contemporary history of the Left.[41] The third aim is to delve into areas of the relatively neglected history of the socialist movement to show both how socialist ideas have played out at specific times and in particular locations and how the borrowings and mutual critiques of well-known activists — Morris, Sorel, C.L.R James, Castoriadis — who refused to adopt orthodox positions, were importantly shaped through engagement in particular struggles.

The methodological bias of the collection is towards the history of ideas.[42] While the essays are written from a range of different theoretical standpoints and advance very different normative claims, they do so by contextualizing arguments rather than through appeal to abstract theoretical debate alone. This volume proceeds from the view that politics without history is directionless and that attempts to renegotiate an alignment between red and black would benefit from a sense of historical precedent rather than more theory.[43]

This book is not designed as a bridge-building project or as a search for similarity, nor is it one that presumes uniformity or homogeneity to be a suitable platform for future Left-wing strategy.[44] Moreover, the essays in this collection do not pass over the sectarianism of revolutionary socialism, but variously attempt to pinpoint what the conceptual fault lines are, show why they are significant, how they might be bridged and/or reflect on the tradeoffs and creative tensions within socialism and the limits to cooperation in context. In some cases, the argument points to the irreconcilability of socialist ideologies and to insurmountable philosophical problems in bridging gaps between different factions. In other cases, spaces for negotiation are identified and encouraged. Some have found some correspondence between black and red, others have not, but even where some correspondence has been identified, the terms are divergent because the contexts are often distinct, or even — less prosaically — people simply have not understood one another. Studies that focus on key individuals show how the interplay between anarchist and Marxist currents has been captured in their writings and can be seen to have been lived through the lives of these individuals in particular intellectual and social contexts. Other chapters illustrate how attempts at engagement failed. Historical analyzes of particular social or labor movements also arrive at starkly different conclusions, and while some case studies show how groups and individuals successfully exploited overlaps, others highlight sectarian collapse.

There are no general lessons here, but a number of important insights can be gleaned about the ways in which ideas translate into and through different practices, how revolutionary ambitions have changed over time and how the experience of struggle has exercised a common influence on activists in very different geographical and historical locations. In their own ways, each of these essays presents a realistic and representative platform for debate and each contributes to our understandings of ideological division and formation on the Left, and within ideologies more broadly.[45] In the conclusion to this volume, David Berry and Saku Pinta set out what they understand to be the most productive terms on which red and black have engaged, and show how ways and means of thinking the past into the present might be given a particular content. But we leave it to readers to decide which (indeed, if any) of the versions of socialism presented here is feasible or attractive and reflect on the future prospects of synthesis or reconciliation.

No history is ever complete, and no collection of papers that seeks to provide a snapshot of an epochal series of such disparate debates as this can be anything more than a beginning. The present collection includes chapters that collectively span nearly 150 years of socialist wrangling, with all its practical achievements and huge disappointments. In spite of our best efforts we were unable to source a chapter on historical feminist engagements with the black and red divide or a feminist perspective on the history of this split. This was particularly disappointing, given the practical and theoretical contribution feminist activists on the Left have made to the understanding of ideological division and its effective negotiation, and to the practical achievements of women’s groups in the socialist movement. But perhaps it is telling that the voices of Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman or groups such as the Mujeres Libres, and innumerable other women’s movements, do not feature prominently in the historiography of anarchism or Marxism. As will become clear, socialism has been recorded predominantly as a man’s game over the past century and it is a shame that this collection has failed to redress this notable imbalance.[46]

Alongside this gender imbalance, there is also a geographical one. Discussion is mainly, though not exclusively, centered on European and North American subjects and their influence elsewhere. This is another regrettable limit on the collection.[47] So, too, is the narrowly ‘political’ focus. Unfortunately, the collection lacks a wider discussion of the cultural and artistic movements that emerged across and between black and red divides.[48] But despite these glaring lacunae, we are confident that the present volume provides rich enough material to introduce the broad contours of the red and black divide, give cause to pause for reflection and kick-start wider discussions. The essays have been organized to trace a history of engagement and to give some sense of the chronology of anarchist and Marxist relations. The volume begins with a robust defense of Marxism and presents an analysis of anarchism which identifies its theoretical and political weakness in a model of human nature that is deemed liberal and, therefore, essentially individualist. Paul Blackledge argues that one of Marx’s great achievements was to present a historicized conception of nature which, in showing how human essence is transformed in and through the process of revolutionary action, also highlighted Marxism’s democratic character. Blackledge sees a potential for dialogue with some forms of anarchism, but argues that the commitment to liberal individualism (here identified with Stirner) leaves anarchists without the practical means of revolutionary organization and results in failure to develop a plausible theory of democracy. Until anarchists accept Marx’s Hegelian conception of history, division will remain. Indeed, the anarchists’ rejection of this conception not only puts them at odds with Marxism, it explains why they have characteristically misunderstood and misrepresented Leninism.

Ruth Kinna’s chapter, which follows, picks up some of these themes. It examines William Morris’s rejection of anarchism as individualist, and shows how this critique fed into Morris’s conception of collective decisionmaking. The discussion looks at the ways in which anarchism and individualism were understood at the end of the nineteenth century in order to show that Morris’s treatment conjured up a ghoul, an anarchism that was individualist and hence antithetical to socialism. Morris contributed to the stigmatization of a tradition of thinking that was far richer than he was prepared to give it credit for, and his critique forced him to substantially revise some of his own democratic principles. It also demonstrated how a lack of care and clarity in the terms of debate helped narrow the scope for cooperation. Morris, like Blackledge, saw little room for negotiating black and red traditions. In unpicking the relationship between anarchism and individualism, Kinna argues that there is at least some scope for the reappraisal of the terms of this split.

Lewis Mates’ chapter provides a powerful and complex counterpoint and development to the preceding chapters. Through an analysis of the lives of George Harvey (an industrial unionist) and Will Lawther (an anarchist syndicalist) in pre-war Durham, Mates shows how the urge to collective action and communist ends were led by idealistic and highly motivated individuals in and around the pit villages during these momentous years. Influenced by the writings of De Leon, Morris, Kropotkin and Aldred, and the practical iniquities and challenges they experienced daily, the socialism that emerged largely eschewed parliamentary action and sought collective direct action for socialist ends. But there were significant ideological tensions between the purist Lawther and pragmatic Harvey, which were played out in the course of the miners’ struggle. The struggle for autonomy and self-management in Durham is a microcosm of wider struggles elsewhere at that time and bears careful reading precisely for the light it sheds on the lived attempts to realize communal ends through individual initiative and revolutionary commitment.

In Chapter 4, Renzo Llorente reopens the question of ideological division through a reappraisal of George Sorel. Llorente’s main concern, however, is to classify Sorel as an anarcho-Marxist: someone in whom certain key features of both traditions were united and around whom both black and red might be able to unite. Llorente shows how Sorel’s direct engagement with the writings of Marx, Proudhon and Bakunin did not lead to theoretical paradox but to hybridization. In some respects, Llorente shows us that anarchist means can lead to communist ends. Sorel distinguished between the violence perpetrated by the state, individual acts of violence and the revolutionary violence of the working classes — the latter essentially a synonym for strikes. He claimed that it was through the marshaling of forces for the general strike that the working class was educated both in its own agency and revolutionary potential. Democratic participation in the organization of the general strike was the direct means to empowerment. The links to Lenin, Kropotkin and Bakunin are clear — the question raised is whether they are convincing enough to help us move beyond black and red, towards some sort of viable synthesis.

The cross-currents of socialist thought are further probed in Carl Levy’s analysis of Gramsci, a figure who, perhaps more than any other either before or after him, is identified with the fusion of anarchism and Marxism. Levy’s chapter brings this out to good effect, but contests this view. In Gramsci we see the eschewal of orthodoxy and the turn to small(er)-scale voluntarism as the motor of progressive counter-hegemonic blocs — the role of the intellectual and moral vanguard notwithstanding. But his thought was shaped by his early engagement with Croce and by involvement in the complex politics of the Italian Left. His relationship with the anarchists reflected the depth of his disagreements with other activists and was not an indication of deep empathy with anarchist ideas. Indeed, his criticisms of Malatesta and other anarchist intellectuals ran alongside an appreciation of Leninism, only to be replaced by councillism once the orthodoxies of Second and Third International Marxism came to prominence.

Saku Pinta’s chapter takes the historical narrative of the volume to the onset of the Second World War. While the First World War proved disastrous for the anarchist movement as a whole, the Second World War and the defeat of the Spanish anarchists killed off what was left of a mass anarchist revolutionary movement, at least in Europe.[49] What came later, as the following chapters show, is a far stronger Leninist form of libertarianism than the anarchist-flavored synthesis that preceded it. In this respect, the perspectives of the Council Communists on the Spanish revolution provide an important historical marker in the twentieth-century history of anarchism and Marxism, while at the same time showing that even in the so-called death throes of anarchism alternative hybrids of libertarian socialism were already well established.

Christian Høgsbjerg’s chapter covers the unique life experiences of the Trinidadian socialist C.L.R. James. As the complementary chapters of Berry and Cornell show, James’ connections with anarchist, syndicalist and black civil rights activists make him a hugely significant figure in the history of the Left. James’ criticism of Trotsky also presents us with a glimpse into the personal and political that shaped this ‘bohemian freelancer.’ Høgsbjerg argues that despite an early flirtation with Kropotkin’s work on the French Revolution, James was no anarchist and his criticism of the direction of the Soviet state and later his break with official Trotskyism are no more indication of this than his appreciation of Kropotkin’s work. James was an anti-anarchist who, despite drawing on and developing the ideas of many around him, remained a committed Marxist. His intellectual legacy lies in autonomism.

David Berry examines the work of Daniel Guérin, a friend of James. His essay considers Guérin’s attempt to synthesize anarchism and Marxism, an attempt which sprang from a desire for ‘total revolution,’ a dissatisfaction with the economic reductionism and authoritarianism of Trotskyism, and from the inspirational works of Bakunin and Proudhon. The way in which Guérin appropriated anarchism after his break with Trotskyism is remarkable precisely because it mirrored the path taken by James, Gramsci and others. And yet Guérin was far more open in his admiration for Proudhon, Stirner and Bakunin and seemed remarkably more open to engagement with their ideas in finding an audience for his own synthesis of anarchism and Marxism. Berry argues that Guérin’s importance lies in his practical engagement with French movements and in his eschewal of abstract theory. He identifies his legacy in the emergence of the new Left in France and elsewhere, highlighted during the events of May ‘68 and beyond.

Benoit Challand provides an analysis of one of the key intellectual markers in the pre-‘68 French revolutionary Left: the group of writers that coalesced around the publication Socialisme ou Barbarie, in particular Cornelius Castoriadis. The life and times of these characters provides an excellent case study of the role of authoritarian personalities in the formation and trajectory of intellectual movements and the failure of revolutionary socialist movements to bridge the divide between anarchism and Marxism — anarchism here identified with Council Communism. The Council Communist tradition and the particular brand of Trotskyism outlined by Lefort and Castoriadis were both productive and suggestive, but ultimately the factionalism and the contrast between the libertarian politics of ‘S ou B’ and the authoritarianism of the group’s leader proved too much for the smooth running of the group. This factionalism is probably the lived experience of day-to-day socialism for innumerable activists. What every expulsion and every act of intellectual dissidence shows, of course, is that ‘red’ and ‘black’ have been, and still are, deeply and passionately contested concepts.

Jean-Christophe Angaut’s essay examines the politics of the Situationist International (SI). While he acknowledges the important influence that the SI exercised on the events in 1968, his analysis is designed to reveal the significance of the critiques that Guy Debord and others leveled against anarchist anti-authoritarians and Marxist anti-capitalists. His intellectually and socially contextualized analysis draws out the Hegelianism of the SI. The SI’s view, he argues, was that the unity of revolutionary theory was to be found in an original critical relation of both black and red with Hegelian thought — a current from which Bakunin, Marx, Engels and Stirner all emerged. Their attempt to go beyond the subsequent separation (outlined in different ways by Blackledge and Kinna), brings us back to a point of unity. Angaut’s point is not to endorse the unity and totality that the SI found, but to return to this starting point. Historical versions of Marxism and anarchism are both redundant, he argues. Today, ‘black and red’ means ‘the multiplicity of real social alternatives, avoiding hierarchy and the rule of the commodity’ (p. 441).

Andrew Cornell takes us back over the Atlantic to a contemporaneous revolutionary movement and shows us how today’s anarchist tactics influenced, morphed into and then once again developed out of the tactics of the black civil rights activists between the late 1930s and the mid-1970s. Anarchists went into the US penitentiary system as conscientious objectors, campaigned against racial separation while inside and also helped radicalize the future leaders of the civil rights movement — their fellow inmates. Once outside, the anarchist-inspired black civil rights movement in the USA evolved further through encounters with the doctrines of Marxist national liberation ideology — particularly the writings of C.L.R. James and the Johnson Forest Tendency — and erupted through both violent and nonviolent civil disobedience, direct action and ‘black bloc’ tactics. The latter were to feed back into the radical undercurrents of anarchist politics in the run up to mass protests surrounding Seattle in 1999.

As Toby Boraman makes clear, Australasian revolutionary socialists were at the fringes of the global movement but in many respects the experiences of the main characters in his micro-drama are familiar to us all. Boraman’s case study sheds light on a neglected area of anarchist research. It shows us the typical rather than the extraordinary, the everyday rather than the high politics of revolution, and is enlightening for precisely that reason. Boraman examines how ideas translated in the Australasian context; how situationists, Council Communists and class struggle anarchists intermingled; and how their acolytes fell out with one another and struggled together for social change and self-expression. He draws on this analysis to reflect on the splits between carnival anarchists and class warriors as an example of a division between the ideologically pure and the pragmatists of life. Many will recognize some aspect of Boraman’s detailed picture and doubtless agree that with the collapse brought about by factional disputes it is likely that the moniker ‘libertarian socialism’ — understood here as ‘a many-sided struggle to change not only work, but also everyday life’ — will supersede those that went before (p. 470).

Bates brings our collection up to date with the most recent and perhaps the most famous rearticulation of contemporary socialist politics: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work. Their writings are controversial and, as he shows, open to a wide variety of interpretations. Bates explains these disagreements by discussing their self-identification as communists, their reinterpretation of Leninism and vocal rejection of anarchism. His analysis also shows the complex historical processes and intellectual lineages that shaped their ideas, both opening up our understanding of them as well as asking a range of difficult questions about the political efficacy of a politics founded on multitude, a rejection of class conflict and a celebration of ‘foundationlessness.’ Hardt and Negri are without doubt original; the questions Bates raises are in relation to what, and at what cost?

Pinta and Berry’s conclusion draws on some of the cross-currents of socialist thinking expressed in these chapters and identifies the most powerful areas of convergence in the gap between social democracy and Bolshevism on the one hand, and anarchist individualism on the other. Their analysis treats libertarian socialism as a form of anti-parliamentary, democratic, antibureaucratic grass roots socialist organization, strongly linked to workingclass activism. Locating libertarian socialism in a gray area between anarchist and Marxist extremes, they argue that the multiple experiences of historical convergence remain inspirational and that, through these examples, the hope of socialist transformation survives. The potential for revolutionary change continues to rest on the possibility of convergence rooted in social struggles, because it is here that affinities are forged and mutual dialogue takes place.

To bring this introduction to a close, it is important to emphasize that this book is simply a collection of reflections on the antecedents and emergent hybrids of contemporary socialist thought. Many will recognize the pictures painted here and many others will disagree with particular inflections, interpretations and biases. This would be to engage with precisely the historical recovery and rearticulation this book seeks to defend and would be a necessary first step towards developing alternatives. Ideas do not spring ready-formed from our minds, but emerge out of the confluence of quiet reflection and the tumult of social struggle. That is what these chapters show and they undoubtedly suggest that political agency and ideological morphology are born of and live through specific times and places. The past might not hold lessons, but a better appreciation of history provides a counterweight to presentism, expands the terms of political praxis and checks political myopia. In this respect, this book is for those who seek to realize new possibilities from within the shell of the old.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank David Berry, Lucien van der Walt and Gabriel Kuhn for comments on an earlier draft of this Introduction.