Marcel van der Linden (1)
In memory of Cornelius Castoriadis,
11 March 1922 - 26 December 1997
From LEFT HISTORY 5.1 (1997)
The political and theoretical views developed by the
radical group Socialisme ou
Barbarie from 1949 onward, have only recently
received some attention outside the French speaking world. (2) For a long
period things were little different in
In Socialisme ou Barbnrie an attempt was made
to consider the bureaucratization of social movements. The central questions
were: is it an iron law that movements opposing the existing order either fall
apart or change into rigid hierarchies? How can militants organize themselves
without being absorbed or rigidified into a bureaucratic apparatus? Socialisme ou Barbarie
first posed these questions because the group asked itself why things had gone
wrong in the traditional labour movement. After all, in the course of the
twentieth century this movement had increasingly alienated itself from its
grass roots and taken on the shape of turgid labour and trade union
bureaucracies.
In reaction to this development Socialisme
ou Barbarie tried to
stimulate new types of opposition. The approach used was that of direct
democracy. The history of the group was essentially a lengthy search for a new
relationship between spontaneity and organization, between practice and theory.
The debates which took place during this search often had a freshness which is
still relevant today.
Socialisme ou Barbarie's most prominent
intellectuals were Castoriadis and Lefort. Cornelius Castoriadis was
born in 1922 and studied law, economics and philosophy at the
The Stalinists were not a part of the labour movement
which had been absorbed by capitalism, as Trotsky had claimed, but bureaucrats,
who opposed the workers as well as capitalism! When Castoriadis
settled in
Claude Lefort was Castoriadis' most important partner in the building of the dissident
current in the PCI. Born in 1924, Lefort was still a
philosophy student when he met Castoriadis for the
first time. As early as 1943 he had formed an underground group at the Lycée Henri IV in
From 1946 onwards Castoriadis
and Lefort worked together. As was customary in the Trotskyist movement, both had cover names. The first called
himself Pierre Chaulieu, the second Claude Montal.(7) Hence they were at
first known as the Chaulieu-Montal Tendency. (8)
The political histories of Castoriadis
and Lefort differed rather markedly. Castoriadis had been a member of a Communist party and
later of a Trotskyist organization. In both cases he
had only taken up an oppositional view during his membership. He was thus used
to party discipline - at least for a while. Lefort,
on the other hand, had no such experience. He had spent fewer years as a member
of a party organization and had taken an oppositional view in the Trotskyist movement from the beginning. The idea of
identifying himself with any party was therefore a strange one for him. (9)
This difference between them became more critical in later political debates.
With hindsight one can see that the first period after
the Second World War -until 1947 - was of a different order from the time which
followed. Before 1947 political relations were relatively open and flexible;
later this was to change for a long time. The tension between the two
superpowers only increased gradually. Stalin had not yet modeled
the newly-conquered countries in
In
In the course of 1947 this relatively peaceful
co-existence came to an end. The relationship between the
In
The Communists dominate the most important unions in
the CGT, the large French trade union federation. The Communist leadership has
been responsible for such surprising steps as the acceptance by the most
important French unions of a kind of adjusted piece rate system, which rewards
individual workers with a high output.'' This policy was also supported by the
Social Democrats. The policies of the two French workers' parties led to wage
decreases in a period of inflation and therefore helped to lower living
standards.
The Communists' integration policy could not, however,
altogether prevent the workers from standing up for their interests. In January
1946 typographers, demanding higher wages, went on strike. In July 1946,
postmen stopped work. And in April 1947 there were strikes at the Renault car
works, which had been nationalized a couple of years before. It was especially
this last strike, in which Trotskyists had played a
leading role (a "Gaullist-Trotskyist-anarchist
chaos," according to the secretary of the CGT, Plaisance),
that made clear that the Communists were starting to lose their grip on
developments. On
The PCF and the social-democratic SFIO now
increasingly opposed one another. The latter, pro-American and a participant in
a number of later governments, was bitterly opposed by the former. In the
period 1947-49 there were great strike waves throughout the country, now
wholeheartedly supported by the PCF and CGT The Social
Democrats, for their part, attempted to undermine the workers' resistance. Financially supported by the CIA. they
succeeded in splitting the CGT and in setting up a new 'moderate' trade union
federation (Force Ouvriére). Although this remained a
far smaller organization than the CGT, many trade union members became
demoralized by the new divisions. Within a few years more than half the CGT
members had departed, leaving about two million halfway through the 1950s. Force
Ouvriére started out with a few hundred thousand
members and never managed greatly to increase this number.
The Cold War, the economic
recovery of the 1950s. and the antagonism between
the two 'workers' parties' and their trade unions, resulted in a clear drop in
militancy: the radical zeal disappeared. In 1947 there had been more than 22
million strike days; by 1952 this had dropped to less than one and a half
million. The circumstances for radical socialists were naturally very
difficult. Enormous political pressure was exerted on all kinds of far left
groups (Council Communists, Trotskyists, Bordigists, etc.) to join one camp or the other:
The isolation had two contradictory consequences. On
the one hand the lack of successful practical activities led to a greater
emphasis on theoretical-programmatic questions. Naturally this resulted in
differences of opinion and quite often ended in large conflicts and even
splits. On the other hand the enmity of the world 'outside' brought the small
left-radical groups together, resulting in co-operative ties despite the
political differences. There was a kind of 'dialectic' of division and reunion.
The changed situation also led to intense debates
within the international Trotskyist movement,
especially about
Rae Spiegel (Raya Dunayevskaya), a former secretary of Trotsky. In
In August 1946 Castoriadis
and Lefort published 0n the Regime and Against the
Defence of the
Castoriadis and Lefort proposed that a new elite,
a "social layer" of bureaucrats, had achieved power in the
In a later stage Castoriadis
and Lefort abandoned the characterization of the
Numerous articles were written by the opposition to
convince their Trotskyist party comrades." When
this failed and the Chaulieu-Montal Tendency seemed
doomed to remain a small minority within a movement that was itself quite
tiny," the dissidents decided to break with the Fourth International. At
the end of 1948 ten or twenty of them left the organization. (15) In March 1949
the group published the first issue of the magazine Socialisme
ou Barbarie - a well-made
periodical of one hundred pages or more. The reasons for leaving the Fourth
International were once again explained in an open letter to the members of the
Fourth International who had been left behind. Trotskyism was reproached for
being a movement without political-theoretical power because it was incapable
of finding an "independent ideological basis for existence." Trotskyism
could not truly liberate itself from Stalinism, because it continued to define
itself as the opposite of Stalinism.
The central article of the first issue was an
extensive text entitled "Socialism or Barbarism," which amounted to a
statement of the group's position. This text was mostly written by Castoriadis. Just as Marx wanted to give a programmatic
foundation to the League of Communists with his Manifesto of the Communist
Party, so Castoriadis attempted to formulate a
political foundation for the new organization with "Socialism or
Barbarism." He took the world situation, which had changed so thoroughly
as a result of the Second World War, as his point of departure. Two "superstates" had divided the world between them: the
What would such a radical-socialist revolution mean? Its
point of departure would lie in the most fundamental contradiction shared by
East and West, bureaucracy and competitive capitalism: the contradiction
between managing and subordinate labour. While it had seemed in Marx's time
that the ending of the private ownership of the means of production would be
sufficient to remove injustice and exploitation from the world, it had now
become clear - among other things because of the existence of the Soviet Union
- that state ownership of the means of production did not necessarily lead to
socialism or even improved circumstances. On the contrary, it might lead to
increased exploitation and repression. Developments in competitive capitalism
had shown that it was not just a question of the ownership of the means of production:
to an increasing extent entrepreneurial leadership and capital ownership were
being separated while the importance of the managers versus the owners had
increased. (17) Everything therefore revolved around the struggle against
hierarchy and bureaucracy. All power must reside in the rank and file, among
the working population.
Right from the start there was a debate on matters of
organization in Socialisme ou
Barbarie. What exactly was the group's
self-definition? Was it to be a collection of independently acting militants,
with no responsibilities whatsoever, or was it necessary to develop a common
praxis alongside the journal? If so, should such activity
assume the role of a vanguard, or not? How was the organization to be
internally structured? Was democratic centralism finished or not?
In April 1949 the majority of the group voted for a
resolution which was to serve as a programmatic basis for future work. In it
the Leninist conception of arousing political consciousness in the working
class from the outside was rejected, as was the idea that the group was to be
merely "a collection of individuals" who
would restrict themselves to publishing a "more or less academic
journal." Yet despite this delineation of aims, the group remained more or
less old-fashioned': Socialisme ou
Barbarie was to develop into a revolutionary party,
capable of leading and co-ordinating the independent workers' struggle,
directed at the conquest of state power.(18)
There was opposition to this resolution, but it was
weak. It was only in 1951-52, after a small group of ex-Bordigists
had joined, (19) and the membership had shrunk further, that the few opponents
decided to voice their own opinion more openly.'" Claude Lefort, especially, opposed the attempts to form a vanguard
party.
In the preceding years Lefort
had gradually developed his doubts about thinking in terms of a vanguard, not
in Socialisme ou Barbarie, but through articles in Les Temps Modernes, the journal founded in 1945 by Jean-Paul Sartre,
Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Lefort's friend and philosophy tutor, among
others.(21) At the end of 1948 Lefort had published a
noteworthy essay in that periodical, in which he blamed Trotsky for hesitating
too long before frontally opposing Stalin's party bureaucracy. He ascribed this
to Trotsky's glorification of the party as a "godlike factor in historical
development." "Trotsky's battle against the bureaucracy,"
according to Lefort, "had no foundation because
objectively Trotsky was himself a founder of this bureaucracy." When at
last Trotsky did reject the Communist Party of' the
Lefort's development
caused tensions within Socialisme ou
Barbarie. In June 1952 he left the organization along
with some supporters, but after a short while he returned. (24) Two texts were
then published in the journal, explaining the prevailing differences of opinion
within the group. Castoriadis still argued for the
idea that Socialisme ou Barbarie ought to be the nucleus of a revolutionary
vanguard party; Lefort, on the other hand, placed the
systematic support for workers' control at the centre of his considerations. The
essence of Castoriadis' reasoning was that the group
should contribute to the overthrow and destruction of capitalist society and
the bourgeois state. For this a political party was needed to lead and
co-ordinate the workers' resistance. The fundamental contradiction between
management and subordinate labour, which dominated East and West, could not be
overcome with one blow: the party had to be a leadership striving for its own
disbandment. This disbandment could, however, only take place after the
revolution. (25) Lefort's position was that the
essential problem was not the organization of the revolution, but workers'
power. The power of the workers would make a revolution possible, but a
revolution would not guarantee workers' power. The only way in which the
proletariat could develop its power was through autonomous forms of
organization. Everything depended on this and not on the party, which was
simply a historically determined expression of specific labour experiences and
could therefore be superfluous or even undesirable in other circumstances. This
is why Socialisme ou Barbarie should not so much concern itself with revolution
and the conquest of state power, as with the experiences of the working class
in the process of organizing itself. (26) In a later article Lefort further elaborated his position and tried to analyze
the 'proletarian experience' as the guiding principle of life for the working
class. (27) With this approach Lefort was an
important predecessor of the later attempts at analyzing capitalism 'from
below' by Raniero Panzieri,
Edward Thompson, Erhard Lucas and others.
The heated internal debates in the group were soon
followed by discussions with outsiders on similar questions. Members of the
group were criticized from the 'left' because of their position on the
vanguard, and from the 'right, because they were too hostile towards the
Stalinist glorification of the patty. It is noteworthy - but also understandable,
in view of the differences of opinion - that almost automatically a division of
labour was created between Lefort and Castoriadis. The latter took up the defence against party
opponents, while the former opened the attack on those who favoured a vanguard-party
conception.
In November 1953 Anton Pannekoek,
the aging Dutch Council Communist, sent a letter to Socialisme
ou Barbarie which was also
published in the journal. (28) In his letter Pannekoek
wrote that he sympathized with the group in many ways, but that he also had two
fundamental differences of opinion: the evaluation of the Russian revolution of
1917, and the question of the vanguard party. Unlike Socialisme
ou Barbarie he did not
regard the October revolution as a proletarian revolt, which had later
degenerated into a bureaucratic state capitalism. Instead he thought that right
from the start this had been a bourgeois event, which could never have resulted
in socialism. As for the vanguard organization, that was totally rejected by Pannekoek. He believed that revolutionaries should not
build up a party but should engage solely in propaganda and theoretical debate.
Their task was to call for workers' control and not to 'lead' a liberation
struggle.
In his answer Castoriadis
concentrated on the question of the vanguard organization. His most important
proposition was that it was precisely when revolutionaries did not build a
party, that the way was cleared for a bureaucratic dictatorship, as in the
"Just as the only 'guarantee' against making
mistakes consists of thinking for oneself, so the only 'guarantee' against
bureaucratization is to be found in permanent action in the anti-bureaucratic
sense, by fighting against the bureaucracy and by showing in practice, that a
non-bureaucratic vanguard organization is possible and that it can maintain
non-bureaucratic relations with the class. For bureaucracy is not born out of
incorrect theoretical opinions, but out of its own necessities in a certain
stage. It is necessary to show precisely through acting that the proletariat
can do without the bureaucracy." (29)
A second letter from Pannekoek
in which he elucidated certain elements of his theory was not published by Socialisme ou Barbarie.(30) Pannekoek's central proposition
was that a revolutionary party could not save a revolution from
bureaucratization; on the contrary, it represented "a step in the
direction of new repression." (31) In a later unpublished letter to Castoriadis, Pannekoek added that
he certainly believed in the existence of vanguards, but that it seems wrong to
him to capture these vanguards in disciplined organizations: "It is always
the case," he wrote, "that certain persons come to the lore through
their deeds, their courage or their clear vision. in
speaking or acting quickly; together these persons in fact form a vanguard,
which we see appearing in every action. In fact they become leaders; ( . . .) When they come together in permanent groups or
parties with fixed programmes these fluent relations become petrified. They
then regard themselves as unofficial leaders and want to be followed and
obeyed." (32)
Jean-Paul Sartre took up a position totally opposed to
that of. Pannekoek. He turned the Communist Party into a fetish. In his great
philosophical work L 'etre et le néant
of 1943 he had defended the proposition that those who are repressed always
need an institution outside and above them in order to resist. (33) In the
1950s Sartre developed this idea to show that the Communist party was vital for
the struggle against capitalism. In a series of articles in Les Temps Modernes Sartre claimed that the working class does not
exist as a class as long as it is not organized in a vanguard party: " The worker is a sub-human (sous-homme)
if he simply accepts being what he is"; he only becomes human when he
"becomes conscious of his sub-humanity." This consciousness implies
resistance and organization. However, the proletariat does not by itself come
into existence. - it is the result of a separate factor,
a "third," which brings together isolated individuals. This binding
factor is the Communist Party. In short: "A worker in contemporary
Sartre's reasoning - which is Stalinist not in itself
but in its conclusions (Merleau-Ponty called it
"ultra-bolshevist") - created an absolute contradiction between
spontaneity and organization. Spontaneity was nothing, was incoherent
"loneliness." Organization, party-organization, was everything. If
the workers lost their trust in the Communist Party, then they lost not only
their trust in the party, but also in politics and in their own class. "The
universe" would then "be bourgeois." (34)
Claude Lefort wrote an
extensive response to Sartre in Les Temps Modernes. He
opposed his conclusion as well as his arguments. The party or whatever kind of
radical organization, was never a 'third.' external factor outside the mass of
the workers, but always a form of expression of that mass. While Sartre
approached the subject 'from above,' Lefort again
thought 'from below':
" The point is to
understand the revolutionary struggle by situating it in the total experience
of the class. The dynamic of the Russian revolution cannot be seen by itself,
but must he looked at in connection with a specific proletariat, situated in
historically determined production conditions and maintaining relations with
other exploited classes; these circumstances cannot he compared with those of
any other proletariat in Europe. The organization of Bolshevism, its rigorous
centralism, should not be seen as a necessary characteristic of the labour
movement, but a particular solution for the relations between the masses and
their vanguard. The problem is to know how bolshevist politics simultaneously
expresses the ripeness and the problems of the Russian proletariat. Moreover,
one tends to ask oneself what the point is of the party in the experience of
the workers, especially in these times. But that is precisely the particular
question which certain people want to avoid at any cost."
Party organization should be a flexible structure,
adjusted to the social relations in which the struggle takes place. The
Communist parties, on the other hand, were nothing but elements of the
Stalinist bureaucracy in the
Whatever the differences of opinion within Socialisme ou Barbarie,
the dislike of every kind of bureaucracy and undemocratic structures was common
to all members of the group. When the organization started to grow in the 1950s
(36) there were more opportunities, not just to think about and write on anti-bureaucracy,
but also to act. This was all the more so because gradually social unrest
increased. In the 1970s Castoriadis described the
changes which became visible from 1952-53:
The Korean War was ending, Stalin died, the workers of
It was under these changing circumstances that Socialisme ou Barbarie
started its work in the factories. Right from the start the organization had
defended the position that a bureaucratic layer of bosses had developed in the
trade unions (and especially in the CGT), which had established increasingly
close ties with the state apparatus. This trade union bureaucracy had become an
independent factor, which functioned as a sort of link between the state
apparatus and the working class, and therefore tried to reconcile both sides
with each other. On the one hand the bureaucracy partially accepted the demands
of the workers in order to retain its own mass base, but on the other it also
tried to meet the demands of the state apparatus in order to remain
'respectable' and to be acceptable as a partner in negotiations. (38)
This was not in itself a new analysis; it had long
been a part of Trotskyist thought. The essential
thing was what kind of political conclusions were drawn from it. Did
revolutionaries have to try to reconquer the trade
unions from within and to dethrone the bureaucrats; or was it, on the contrary,
more desirable to work outside the unions and build up new organizations? In
practice Socialimse ou Barbarie's factory work usually amounted to the latter, but
not everybody was happy about this. In the period 1954-55 a debate on this
topic took place in the journal. Daniel Mothé
defended the position which supported working outside the unions. Other
participants in the debate, like the anarchist Fontenis,
thought that revolutionaries should be active in the trade unions because this
was the only way for them to make contacts with the workers and win their
trust:
"Fighting from the outside implies cutting
oneself off from one's audience. And let us not forget that in certain sectors,
where the workers are distributed amongst an infinite number of workplaces or
small firms, the trade union meeting is the only way in which the workers can
be brought together and to made to listen." (39)
Socialisme ou Barbarie's most important
factory work took place in the Renault factories in Paris-Bilancourt,
although actions were also organized in other places, including an insurance
firm. The driving force at Renault was Daniel Mothé,
a politically experienced worker who had joined the group in 1952. Like his
fellow group members he had received his inspiration and general ideas about
what was happening in modern capitalist firms from the American group of
sympathizers around C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya.
Inspired by developments in the
As early as 1946 the group around James and Dunayevskaya published a pamphlet entitled The American
Worker. In this publication Paul Romano ( "I am a
young worker approaching thirty") described his life in and outside the
factory: the physical exertion demanded by the work, the weekend, family life
and forms of shop floor resistance (41) This approach, a novel one at the time,
with a view of modern capitalist reality from the perspective of the daily life
of the (male) worker, was an attractive one for European radical leftists. The
story by Paul Romano was serialized in Socialisme ou Barbarie and later in an
Italian periodical as well. (42) The Americans were also the first of the
radical leftists to set up factory work. Worker members of the group founded a
paper called Correspondence in 1953, meant to be an organ of independent (not
controlled by the trade unions) workers' struggles in the factories. (43)
All this stimulated Socialisme
ou Barbarie into making
similar efforts. Developments in factories were reported more and more often in
the journal, a series was published on 'Life in the Factory' and the American
example was followed by producing a factory paper. (44) In April 1954 workers
in one of the Renault workshops distributed a leaflet on wage levels; this
leaflet gained a lot of support among other groups of workers in the firm and
as a result the first issue of Tribune Ouvriére, a stenciled, independent monthly paper for the
personnel of the car factory, appeared in May 1954.J5
With or without direct influence from Socialisme ou Barbarie similar newspapers
came into being within a short time outside Paris (Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse)
and in other firms in Paris (Bréguet, Morse, etc.) At
the beginning of 1958 they decided to work together. (46)
The year 1958 marked a break in French post-war
history. On 13 May the army took power through a coup in the Algerian colony in
the hope of being able to fight the liberation movement more effectively. In
Castoriadis regarded this
development as the political expression of a deep crisis of French capitalism. As
early as mid-1958 he published an analysis in Socialisme
ou Barbarie in which the
deep-seated unevenness of post-war French development played a central role. He
considered the country to be split into two contrasting economic sectors: a very
modern and dynamic versus an obsolete and backward capitalism. He supposed that
these two sectors (the France "of 1958" and the France "of
1858") could not tolerate one another. "The fast development of a
large, modern industry cannot, in the course of time, be combined with the
maintenance of entire economic sectors (agriculture, small-scale trade,
small-scale industry) in their present anachronistic form and the conservation
of the corresponding layers of the population." The continued existence of
a backward sector, which still carried a lot of political weight, had
contributed to the blocking of the parliamentary system. It had strengthened
the process of disintegration of the bourgeois political forces; consecutive
governments had been made subservient to the special interests of one group or
another; through this splitting of forces the state apparatus lost its ability
to act on behalf of the interests of capitalism as a whole. "Parliament
and government [...] have become almost exclusive instruments of those specific
interests." The lack of even one specific 'workers party' had strengthened
this bourgeois impasse. The reformist pressure which could have forced the
bourgeoisie to discipline itself and consolidate into
one conservative political party, was lacking. Large parts of the state
apparatus were therefore obsolete from a modern capitalist point of view; the
taxation system was mostly indirect, the credit system "exceptionally
modern under Napoleon III," etc. Together these factors had, according to Castoriadis, resulted in a situation in which French
capitalism after 1945 had been unable to work out a coherent policy and to put
it into practice. The objective course of development after
In Castoriadis' eyes, de
Gaulle's coup was not a defeat for the French working class. The fact that only
a small part of that class had taken part in the demonstrations called on
In these circumstances Castoriadis
saw a dual task for the revolutionary socialists: On the one hand they should
help build independent workers' organizations and papers, similar to those
starting to come to the fore at Renault and at other firms; at the same time
there would have to be a co-ordination of the various resistance committees and
a national workers' paper. On the other hand the revolutionaries, now spread
out all over the country and in numerous groups (the "diffused
vanguard"), would have to be brought together in one organization - a new
type of party, based on experiences since 1917:
"The programme of this organization should be
socialism, embodied in workers' power, the total power of the workers' councils
which will realize the workers' management of the firm and of society. The
structure of the organization should be democratic-proletarian, and it should express
the domination by the grass roots in all aspects of life and organizational
activity, and which in itself suppresses the distinction between leaders and
led. The methods of work must agree with the priority of the grass roots and
should give all militants the possibility of understanding what the
organization is doing, and to control it." (47)
Castoriadis' opinion about
the tasks of French revolutionaries was certainly not commonly shared in Socialisme ou Barbarie.
In September 1958 Socialisme
ou Barbarie definitively
split. Two Dutch Council Communists were present. In their account of the
events - published in the contemporary paper Spartacus - they assumed that
there had been three currents within the group:
b) the "centre"
around Castoriadis;
C) the "left"
around Lefort.
Using this yardstick, they wrote the following:
"It is not the left wing which completed the
break, but the right and centre, which deliberately steered for it. So
deliberately, that the break came before the congress where left, centre and
right were to discuss their differences of opinion. This congress was to take
place in
The splitting-up of Socialisme
ou Barbarie was the result
of the fact that the majority of the group wanted to form a vanguard
organization in the short term, because they judged the conditions to be
favourable (De Gaulle's coup, their own growth).'" The minority, which saw
nothing in such a project, was a nuisance and was therefore 'removed' through a
contrived break.
In the preceding period Lefort's
opposition had already intensified. He himself has indicated two reasons for
this. On the one hand there was the close co-operation which had grown between Castoriadis and Dunayevskaya in
the 1950s. Lefort largely appreciated Dunayevskaya's opinions on the day-to-day resistance of
industrial workers and her ideas on autonomous forms of organization. However
his abhorrence of her philosophical approach, with which she, according to Lefort, wanted to create "in vague Hegelian
terms" a synthesis between world history and social life, was stronger:
"The close relationship between Castoriadis and
[Raya Dunayevskaya] for the
first time made me aware of the deep conceptual differences which formed the
basis of our political differences."" On the other hand Lefort had strengthened his opposition in reaction to the
current in Socialisme ou Barbarie which was still inspired to a large degree by the
Bolshevists, and to which several newcomers - among them Jean-Francois Lyotard and Pierre-Francois Souyri
- belonged, as well as Véga. (52)
The split was merely the sudden end of a process of
alienation which had been going on for years. After the split Socialisme oil Barbarie published
texts by Castoriadis and Lefort
outlining their opposing positions. The central proposition of Castoriadis's article was that any organization could
degenerate into a bureaucratic monster, but that such degeneration could
definitely be prevented if a conscious permanent struggle is waged against it. Furthermore,
this could best be done by structuring the organization on a grass-roots basis.
The working class badly needed a new type of organization along these lines, in
view of existing needs for information, discussion, the exchange of experiences
and communal action." In his article, Lefort
recognized the need for organized workers' action as well as for co-ordination
and the exchange of experiences; but he denied that a separate party was
necessary for this, as Castoriadis thought. That task
could be fulfilled by groups of workers and employees in the firms, without
intervention by a separate vanguard. The revolutionary socialists must, insofar
as they themselves are wage labourers in a firm, actively participate. And insofar
as they, as intellectuals, stood outside the production process, they could
give theoretical and practical help to the struggle on condition that they
subordinated themselves to the broad movement."
The split-off group around Claude Lefort,
which also included Henri Simon, a white-collar worker who would play an
important role in further developments, founded the Informations
et Liaisons Ouvriéres (ILO).
The group published a paper under the same title. It changed its name in 1960
to Infonmations et Corresporance Ouvriéres (ICO) and
existed until 1973. (55) ICO took the position that trade unions have a
system-stabilizing function in capitalism; that is the way they are seen by the
bourgeoisie and that is the reason the state apparatus absorbs them in numerous
consultative organs and commissions.
The workers understand this; they don't see the unions
so much as an organization of their own, but as a service provider, which they
can call on. The relation between workers and unions is businesslike, a 'realistic'
relationship: "The unions use the workers as an army with which they can
manoeuvre on the political chess board. The workers make the same use of the
trade unions."
Just as on a national scale the trade unions were
simply the intermediaries between the workers and the capitalists (and not the
direct representatives of the workers), so the trade union delegates in the
firms were simply intermediaries between the staff and management. According to
ICO this did not, however, mean that trade unions were degenerate, as Castoriadis thought they were. On the contrary, they formed
"very lively and efficient" bureaucratic machines, which did have
their uses for the workers. Beside the formal and distant trade union apparatus
there was a second level: that of practical solidarity and group consciousness
in different departments and places of work within the firms. The communal
interest promoted there happened without the trade unions. In those places
there was still autonomous activity, which should be supported by
revolutionaries - not as representatives of an outside party, but as
colleagues. (56)
ICO did not want to play any kind of vanguard role;
the only task they set themselves was the establishment of contacts between
different (groups of) workers. ICO's paper was a
means of transferring ideas; it was not distributed to propagate the ideas of a
particular group, but to exchange information and experiences. ICO hung on for
fifteen years. However, it became increasingly clear that the group was
deceiving itself. For their paper was obviously not just a means of
transferring ideas. Yvon Bourdet,
who was himself an ICO member for quite some time, wrote:
"The militants of the 'I.C.O.' group [...1 did
not succeed in realizing their theory or their announced absence of theory;
they could not reduce their own role to that of neutral information provider,
which limited itself to announcing certain workers' struggles outside the place
where they occurred; they knew very well that the stories they were
distributing were not just any old stories. Would they have printed the story
of a freshly converted trade union activist (except to mock him)? There can he
no doubt that their trade mark censored their potential correspondents a
priori."
Despite their intention of maintaining an invisible
role, the ICO activists could not prevent themselves from operating as the
members of a group with some very specific ideas." The only alternative to
this situation would have been for the group to ignore its own aims and simply
print everything, without any limitations. But this would have made nonsense of
the group's aim to provide a voice for autonomous struggle. After the revolt of
May 1968, when the membership of ICO grew explosively, this dilemma arose. Part
of the new membership began to argue for activities which went further than the
ICO advocated and the resulting tensions ultimately led to dissolution of the
organization.
Socialisme ou Barbarie steadily grew from
1958 onwards. Many public meetings were organized and the influence amongst
Parisian students and workers at Renault grew. The paper Pouvoir
Ouvrier, which functioned as an overall paper of the
various independent workers' groups, did fairly well. Castoriadis
did not, however, simply see this fortunate development as 'confirmation' of'
correct opinions. His attitude concerning the opinions of the group, such as
those which he himself had helped shape, became on the contrary more critical. By
the middle of the 1950s he had already brought his doubts about certain
important aspects of Marx's theory to the fore in a series of articles entitled
"On the Content of Socialism." At an early stage Castoriadis
was critical of two particular elements of historical materialism: Marx's
economic theory and Marx's position on technology The
author of Das Kapital had
assumed that in capitalism the labour power of the workers was a commodity,
just like any other. By putting it this way, however, Marx had made a fatal
mistake. For labour power does not have a fixed use and exchange value which
may be objectively determined. The capitalist who buys a ton of coal knows how
much energy he may extract from it assuming a particular state of technology;
but if he buys labor for a month he can never be
certain what the output of that labour power will be. For
labour power is a human commodity, which can oppose its use. For the
same reason labour power does not have a fixed - scientifically calculable -
price, since the height of the wage is not the result of invisible economic
laws, but of the relationship of forces between capitalists and workers. What Castoriadis reproached Marx for was therefore that he had
kept the concept of class struggle - which was after all essential for him -
outside his economic theory, and had therefore not been radical enough. If one
did include the concept of labour as a human commodity in the analysis, then
all the other laws which Marx had formulated (labour value, increase in the
organic composition of capital, tendential decrease
of the rate of profit) would turn out not to be laws at all, but the more or
less accidental result of relations of force and conflict situations. For a
vision of socialism this criticism had far-reaching consequences. If there were
no economic laws, then one could no longer maintain that capitalism would reach
its end for economic reasons. The nature of history became unpredictable and
every historical situation was by definition open.'"
In traditional 'scientific socialism' the
technological forces of production (machines) were regarded as an independent
and neutral factor. The factory, for example, was described in Das Kapital as a peak of
efficiency and rationality. Capitalist technology used in such a factory was
simply the technology. The problem in a society based on competition and profit
lay exclusively in the application of technology: in socialism other priorities
in production would be set and the workers would themselves manage the
factories. Castoriadis, on the other hand, did not
regard technology as neutral; in this field, too, he discerned the problem of
force relations and struggles. He regarded the continued splitting up of
particular tasks (conveyor belts and tile like) as a method used by management
to increase their control over the workers. By exactly proscribing every bodily
movement in connection with machines their independence could be further
affected. Technology was, therefore, first and foremost class-technology. In
socialism, a new technology should be developed, which enriches the labour
process and increases the autonomy of the workers.
From 1958-59 Castoriadis
combined his earlier analysis of the main contradiction in capitalism (the
contradiction between management and those actually doing the work) with his
criticism of Marx's ideas about economy and technology. The new critical theory
of society which grew from this assumed that the real contradiction of
capitalism would no longer be sought in the economic area (the Marxist
contradiction between the social form of production and private ownership of
the means of production), but within production itself. In every firm and in
every office, Castoriadis stated, there was a
permanent struggle between the managers, who wanted to make everyone work as
hard and as well as possible, and the blue and white collar workers who were
alienated from their work. Management faced a very fundamental problem: it was
impossible to formulate all-encompassing rules and regulations which prescribed
all labour tasks for all personnel. A minimum space was always needed for
improvisation and individuality, since there was no such thing as total
knowledge of ail people and all situations. This meant that a certain effort
was also always required from the workers, an effort which went further than
the official requirements. Hence the paradoxical fact that the production
process stopped short in very short order, as soon as everyone did exactly what
they're supposed to, according to management rules. This was also the
explanation for the possibility of 'working-to-rule.' While management was
forced on the one hand to appeal for the co-operation of the staff, it
continually tried to limit this room for irregular activity. This was the
reason for the introduction of 'scientific work organization' and similar
experiments. But management would, by definition, never succeed in entirely
reducing humans to robots. (59)
With these thoughts Castoriadis
made a very real contribution to left-radical theorizing. The problem was,
however, that Castoriadis positioned his theories in
an interpretation of post-war capitalism which turned out to be untenable. He
transformed the proposition that the economic contradiction was not the most
vital into the proposition that there were no longer any contradictions in
capitalism at all. And he changed the thesis that the tendential
decrease of the profit rate was not an economic law into the thesis that
capitalism had definitely conquered the economic crisis. In this manner Castoriadis, like so many others, became the victim of the
illusion that the period of rapid growth which had started in about 1950 would
continue indefinitely.
In 1959 Castoriadis
circulated a text in Socialisme ou
Barbarie in which he not only explained that
capitalism had economically stabilized itself, but also that the living
standards of the working class would steadily improve. He added that trade
unions had become cops in the system, exchanging wage increases for the
obedience of the workers; that political life no longer concerned the
population and had become the concern of specialists; that the workers no
longer participated in the actions of the workers' parties; that all of society
was privatized. (60)
The 'right wing,' as described by the Dutch Council
Communists, opposed these new propositions. Its members could not understand
how Castoriadis could still regard himself as a
revolutionary, if he saw developments so pessimistically. Pierre Souyri, especially, threw himself at a study of the
'classics' (Hilferding, Luxemburg, Lenin, Bukharin) to show how capitalism
could only continue to produce new economic crises. His conclusion was that in
capitalist development long periods of economic recession varied with periods
in which new paths of recovery were explored. The long 'depression' of
1874-1896 had resulted in modern colonialism and finance capital; the problem
period 1930-1950 had resulted in an economy marked by extensive state
intervention, which would itself run into problems. (61)
The discussions between Souyri. Lyotard and others
on the one hand, and Castoriadis on the other, went
on for many years. The gap between them became unbridgeable and led to the
second split of the group in 1963. The 'orthodox' side took on the paper Pouvoir Ouvriér. after consultation. This was not all that surprising in view
of their continued belief in the importance of workers' struggle. Castoriadis, on the other hand, kept Socialisme
ou Barbarie. Pouvoir Ouvriér was to continue
publishing up to 1969.
After Castoriadis had broken
with the most essential positions of Marxism, he concluded in the period
1963-65 that the entire philosophical foundation of historical materialism
should be rejected. In a series of articles on "Marxism and Revolutionary
Theory" Castoriadis explained his
considerations. (62)
In the first place he rejected the proposition that in
human history economic development (forces of production and factors of
production) is the most important factor, for a particular sector of society
can never be more 'important' than another: "One cannot say in general
that the economy determines ideology, nor that ideology determines the economy,
nor finally that economy and ideology determine each other, for the simple
reason that economy and ideology [...] are themselves products of a particular
stage (and in fact a very recent stage) of historical development." A
general-genetic perspective was necessary: "In the same jungle, separated
by a few kilometers, two primitive tribes with the
same weapons and tools, develop social structures and
cultures which differ enormously from each other. Was it God who determined
that it should be so, was a specific tribal 'soul' the cause? No, a study of
the total history of both tribes, of their mutual relations etc., makes it
possible to understand how the different developments have taken place." Marx's
position on the 'primacy' of the economy and the forces of production was an
incorrect generalization of one special historical case, namely the transition
of feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe between 1650 and 1850, when an
already well-developed bourgeoisie pushed aside the absolutist monarchy and the
feudal remnants out of economic necessity. But this model of historical
development was certainly not applicable to other places and times.
In the second place Castoriadis
opposed the "objectivist rationalism" of the Marxist approach, which
assumed that history was dominated by laws. If one accepted this thought, then
individuals and classes in fact lost all freedom, for all of their deeds
necessarily followed from the 'laws' of history. In fact history in no way
developed rationally. It was a complicated combination of rationality and
irrationality; human acts often led to unintended results which - partially
-themselves acquired a life of their own. There was an interchange between
'objective' logic, which ran outside the control of people, and 'subjective'
logic, which flowed from the choices and deeds of groups, of people. That was
why it was nonsense to suggest - as Marxists did - that "the secret"
of history has been revealed. Such a claim was just as much beside the truth as
the claim that "we at last possess the secrets of nature," and itself
led to misplaced elitist thinking:
If ultimately there is a true theory of history, if
there is rationality at work in events, then it is clear that the leadership of
development should be entrusted to specialists in this theory, to the
technicians of this rationality. The absolute power of the Party [...] then has
a philosophic status. He who strives for a new society truly based on workers'
control should no longer base himself on Marx's historical materialism, but
help work on a new theory and politics, which realizes that there is no such
thing as a total view and leadership of history: Whoever wants to be a
revolutionary can no longer regard himself as a Marxist.
The left-criticism of Marxism, which Castoriadis developed in 1964-65, had important
consequences for Socialisme ou
Barbarie, because on the inside Castoriadis
was considered the "brains'' of the group. The undermining of the trusted
political-theoretica1 foundations resulted in a weakening of mutual ties; the
lack of a 'programme' or concrete goal began to have a paralysing effect. Furthermore,
growing doubts had inspired Castoriadis to
philosophical, abstract' thoughts, which were not understood by many group
members. The periodical had become the most important activity of the group,
but was no longer the result of a collective effort. "There was no longer
a point to maintaining the magazine and the group under these
circumstances." (63) In the middle of 1965 the fortieth and last issue of
the periodical appeared. The subscribers and readers were, however, only
informed of the definitive demise of Socialisme ou Barbarie in June 1967. The
'official' obituary, a leaflet, described the disappointment which had grown
amongst the members of the group about the poor results of many years' work. Readers
had not co-operated actively with the paper but had only consumed it; new
members had joined not out of revolutionary conviction but out of social need;
the French population in general was depoliticized. In this situation there was
no longer any room for an organization like Socialisme
ou Barbarie. The members
would remain active but went their own separate ways. If the possibilities for
a group or periodical were to improve once again, then they would be prepared
"to restart our enterprise on a firmer foundation and with a different
relation towards those who have followed our work." (64) Nothing ever came
of it.
Quite soon after the founding of Information et Correpsondance Ouvriéres, Claude Lefort had also
parted with this group and left Henri Simon and others behind. After this he
would never again become active in an organization. In order to understand this
break in his lilt, it is important to point at Lefort's
connection with Maurice Merleau-Ponty (l908- 1961),
who had great influence on him from the beginning of the 1940s and was also a
close friend."' Merleau-Ponty, who is sometimes
described as the philosopher of ambiguity and equivocality,
rejected any kind of total thinking. According to him, it would be impossible
ever to know all of reality, if only because we are part of that reality and
help to influence it. A position 'outside' or 'above' the world did not exist;
human observation was always only partial and always took place from a partial
perspective. For this reason we see ourselves in everything that we see and
every thought about the world is 'ambiguous.' In Merleau-Ponty's
eyes Socrates, the tireless questioner, was the true philosopher, steeped in
the provisional and incomplete nature of the truth. (66)
On the basis of this tradition of doubt and proper
modesty in questions concerning 'the truth,' Lefort
began to realize that his earlier discussions with Castoriadis
had taken place within the wrong framework.
"Within the limits of a certain
logic we were both partially correct and partially wrong. He [Castoriadis] was right when he said that self-rule does not
entirely exist within the limits of the organs of places of work or industries,
but should be realized on a scale which encompasses all of society. He was also
right in saying that those who saw this not only had the right attitude for
defending that idea, but also to attempt to reach that goal as well as they
could; such acting further assumes that a course of action is determined, that
a vote is taken on decisions, discipline, etc. I was right when I said that the
relevant thing was not the concept of self-rule, the accompanying programme, or
an anti-bureaucratic speech, but social practice, the real social relations
which would be found in the Party - which in its turn would, as soon as it had
made itself the sole owner of that which is revolutionary and universal, would
necessarily subordinate the struggle of the self-governing organs to its own
strategy. I proposed that the party had an indestructible urge to consolidate
and expand its position and that the ruling group within the party had the same
indestructible urge to order, protect and consolidate its own position, quite
apart from the ideas of individuals. This was the logical framework which had
to disappear, the underlying assumption which had to be rejected." (67)
Both Castoriadis and Lefort had reasoned in their own way as if they stood
outside the world and could disclose the 'truth.' They merely differed in their
opinion about the nature of this truth. But would the discussion not take on a
completely different character if one were to give up the pretence of 'total
truth'? Could it not be true that precisely this striving for the truth was the
ideological basis of modem bureaucracy, which attempted to subject everything
to its 'generally valid' rules? It was in this direction that Lefort began to search. He still supported the struggle for
self-determination, the building of democratic organs at a grass roots level,
but he now tended to identify with decentralized thinking. He continued to
support the struggle against the monopoly of power, knowledge and the means of
production. But he rejected the idea that this struggle should be fought according
to a general plan (with or without the Party) and that 'everything would
change' after the revolution. From his own approach Castoriadis
had reached the same conclusion. He too rejected the 'rationalism' which forms
the basis of all thinking in terms of the absolute truth. (68)
May '68 brought Lefort and Castoriadis to the fore. Together with Edgar Morin - a
radicalized former Communist (69) - they wrote May 1968: The Breakthrough. It
was available in the bookshops as early as June. Of course, their ideas still
differed. Castoriadis, for example, called for the
formation of a new organization which could provide continuity and reinforce
radical élan, while Lefort was very cautious in this
respect. There were, however, also similarities. The revolt had, after all,
shown with dazzling clarity that a revolutionary spirit could come, just like Socialisme ou Barbarie
had claimed, not just from the factories hut also from elsewhere. In all those
places where there was a contradiction between management and executive labour
- at the universities where authoritarian administrators could decide the
future of students - radical opposition could grow. Lefort
was especially impressed by the students, because they did not allow their
struggle to be led by predetermined strategies or rigid organizations, but
acted and spoke here and now. It was precisely this that Castoriadis
regarded as wrong and one cause of the failure of the revolt. Of course he also
dismissed the idea of a Leninist master plan, but he nevertheless thought that
structuring the revolt would have produced more significant results." (70)
I will not follow the further development of Lefort and Castoriadis here,
although it should be noted that both developed their critique of the
pretensions of all theory much further in the 1970s and 1980s. It also is
remarkable that one of those group members who had opposed the political
consequences of this line of thinking in the 1950s (i.e. Jean-Francois Lyotard) became a founding father of postmodern
relativism in the 1970s. (71) Socialisme ou Barbarie's main achievement
has been its fundamental critique of social hierarchy. On a practical level,
this critique allowed the group to take workers' everyday experiences more
seriously than most other political currents did at the time (although this
"view from below" was male and factory centered).
On a theoretical level, Socialisme ou Barbarie gradually radicalized
its anti-bureaucratic opposition to the point where it finally revealed the
inner connection between hierarchical structures and the category of absolute
truth.
NOTES
1. I am grateful to Claude Lefort,
Michael Lowy, and an anonymous referee for their comments on an earlier draft
of this article.
2. Attention is generally focused not on the group as
such, but on its prominent member Cornelius Castoriadis.
See Brian Singer, "The Early Casroriadis:
Socialism, Barbarism and the Bureaucratic Thread," Caadian
Journal of Political and Social Theory 3 (Fall 1979), 35-56; Arthur Hirsh,
"Castoriadis and Socialime
ou Barbarie," in The
French New Left: An Intellectual History from Sartre to Gorz
(
3. "Entretien avec Comelius Castoriadis," Le Monde,
4. Rodolphe Prager (ed.), Les congrés de la Quartriéme Vol.ll:: L Internationale dans la guerre (Paris 1981),
347-49 and 464
5 Rene Dazy, Fusillez ces chiens enragés.
Le genocide des Trotskistes
(Paris 1981 ), 266-74.
6. "An interview with Claude Lefort,"
Telos 30(Winter 1976-77), 174.
7. For Castoriadis the use
of cover names was not just a matter of Trotskyist
folklore: He was a foreigner and worked in an intolerant environment: the OECD.
Besides Pierre Chaulieu he also later used the
pseudonyms Paul Cardan and Marc Coudray.
8. In a letter to the author, dated
9. This difference was pointed out by Andre Liebich, "Socialisme ou Barbarie. A Radical Critique
of Bureaucracy," Our Generatiorn 12, 2 (Autumn 1977), 56.
10. Bordigists: supporters
of the theories of Amadeo Bordiga
(1889-1970), the leader of the Italian Communist party in the early 1920s, who
later organized an anti-Stalinist opposition.
11. A comprehensive history of these splits and their
mutual cooperation has yet to be written. Information on the American group may
be found in Raya Dunayevskaya,
For the Record: The Johnson-Forrest Tendency or the Theory of State Capitalism,
1949-51: Its Vicissitudes and Ramifications (Detroit 1972); on the British group:
Richard Kuper (ed.), The Origins of the International
Socialists (London 1971); on the French group, beside the other literature
indicated in this essay: Jean-Francois Kessler, "Le communisme
de gauche en France (1927-1947)." Revue francaise de science politique
28, 4 (August 1978), especially pp. 754 onwards. The 'official' Trotskyist critique of the Chaulieu-Montal
Tendency was formulated by Pierre Frank in the article "'Novateurs' et 'conservateurs' dans la question de I'URSS," Bullerin
Intérieur de l 'IS, June 1947; reprinted in Pierre
Frank, Le Stalinisme (Paris 1977), 171-219.
12. "Sur le régime contre la défense de I'URSS," Bulletin Intérieur
of the PCI, Nr. 31 (August 1946); reprinted in Cornclius
Castoriadis, La societe bureaucratique. Vol. 1: Les rapports du
production en Russie (Paris 1973), 63-72; English
translation: "On the Regime and Against the Defense
of the
43..Also: "Le probleme de I'URSS et la possibilité d'une troisitme solution historique," in: L'URSS au lendenmain de la guerre. Matériel de discussion prépatoire au Ile congrés de la IVe Internationale, part III, February 1947; reprinted in Castoriadis, La societe bureauctique, 73-89; English translation: "The Problem
of the USSR and the Possibility of a Third Historical Solution," in
Political and Social Writings, I, 44-55.
13. In practice the Trotskyist
movement is substantially an organization for debate, with numerous congresses
and conferences. The Chaulieu-Montal Tendency, although
officially only founded in August 1947, presented its own positions at the
following meetings: the third PCI congress (September 1946), the fourth PCI
congress (November 1947), the preparatory congress for the World Congress of
the Fourth International (March 1948), the Second World Congress of the Fourth
International (April 1948) and the fifth PCI congress (July 1948). See also Rodolphe Prager (ed.), Les congrés de la Quatriéme Internationale. Vol. III: Bouleveersements
er crises de I'aprés-guerre
(1946-1950) (
14. About fifty people seem to have voted for the
position of Chaulieu-Montal at the fourth PCI
congress (November 1947). At the time the PCI had a few hundred or perhaps one
thousand members. Compare "Rectification," Socialisme
ou Barbarie [hereafter SE],
Nr. 1(March-April 1949), 103.
15. In his letter to the author mentioned above, Lefort writes: "As early as '47
a divergence arose: Castoriadis wanted us to wait
until we had convinced as many members as possible before coming out with a
definite program and an 'unfurled banner. As for me, I thought that our group
would rot inside the Party. I left the PCI before the others. Among other
things, I was very doubtful regarding the project of drafting a new 'Manifesto'
and announcing a new form of revolutionary leadership. Also, even though I had
contributed most actively to the break with the PCI, I did not contribute to
the first issue of Socialisme ou
Barbarie. As for what followed, the articles that I
published made clear the distance that separated me from Castoriadis."
16. Lettre ouverte aux militants du P.C.I.
et de la 'IVe Internationale',"
SB, Nr. 1 (March-April 1949),90-101.
17. "Socialisme ou Barbarie," SE, Nr. 1
(March-April 1949). English translation: "Socialism or Barbarism," in
Political and Social Writings, I, 76-106.. In a debate on Socialisme ou Barbarie in the journal
Arguments, vol. I, Nr. 4 (June-September 1957) Gérard
Genette and Edgar Morin suggested in their
contributions that this approach was closely related to that of the Cold War
propagandist (and ex-Trotskyist) James Burnham, who
had proposed in his book The Managerial Revolution (New York 1941), that the
managers were the new ruling class. Lefort protested
against this interpretation in the same issue of Arguments.
18. "Le parti révolutionnaire (Résolution),"
SE, Nr. 2 (May-June 1949), 99-107.
19. See Véga and others,
"Declaration Politique," SE, Nr. 7
(August-September 1950), 82-94, and [Philippe Bourrinet],
La gauche communiste d 'Italie
(
20. Castoriadis: "By
the end of 1952 the group was reduced to about ten members and its publications
were irregular and scarce." "An Interview with
Cornelius Castoriadis," Telos
23 (Spring 1975), 134.
21. Practically from the beginning Claude Lefort was a contributor to Les Temps Modernes;
in the second issue, which appeared in 1945, an article of his on the Marxist
analysis of fascism was published. His work for the journal would continue up
to 1954.
22."La contradiction de Trotsky et le probleme revolutionaire,"
Les Temps Modernes 39 (December 1948 - January 1949),
46-69; published in English as "The Contradiction of Trotsky," in
Claude Lefort, Political Forms of Modern Society. Edited
and Introduced by John B. Thompson (
23. Review of Alain Sergent
and Claude Harmel, Histoire de I'Anarchie,
vol. I, in Les Temps Modernes 56(1950), 2269-74.
24. "La vie de notre groupe," SE, Nr. 9 (April-May 1952), 28.
25. Pierre Chaulieu [Comelius Castoriadis], "La
direction prolétarienne," SB, Nr. 10(July-August
1952), 10-18; English translation: "Proletarian Leadership," in:
Political and Social Writings, 1, 198-206.
26. Claude Mental [Claude Lefort], "Le prolétariat et
le probléme de la direction revolutionnaire,"
SB, Nr. 10(July-August 1952), 18-27.
27. [Claude Lefort], "L'experience proletarienne,"
SB, Nr. 11 (November-December 1952), 1-19.
28. "Une lettre de Anton Pannekoek,"
SP, Nr. 14(April-June 1954), 39-43. Pierre Chaulieu [Cornelius Castoriadis),
"Reponse au camarade Pannekoek," SB, Nr. 14(April-June 1954), 44-50.
30. Cajo Brendel
- a Pannekoek sympathiser - has suggested that Socialisme ou Barbarie
did not publish the letter because it contained too much "fundamental
criticism of Castoriadis." See Cajo Brendel (ed.), "Une correspondance entre Anton Pannekoek et Pierre Chaulieu," Cahiers du communisme de counseils, Nr. 8 (May 1971), 15-35. Material in Pannekoek's papers shows this to be untrue. In a letter to
'Chaulieu,' dated
31. "Deuxime lettre d'Anton Pannekoek a Pierre Chaulieu,"
published in Cajo Brendel,
"Une correspondance,"
32-5.
32. This is the letter of
33. Jean-Paul Sartrc, L'étre et le néant
(
34. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Les communistes
et la paix," Les Temps Modernes,
Nr. 81 (July 1952), 1-50, Nr. 84-85 (October-November 1952), 695-763, Nr.
101(April 1954), 1731- 1819.
35. Claude Lefort, "Le marxisme et Sartre," Les
Temps Modernes, Nr. 89 (April 1953)1541 -70. This was
a reaction to the first two parts of Sartre's series of articles. The
discussion was continued, but did not result in any basically different points
of view: Jean-Paul Sartre, "Reponse a Lefort," Les Temps Modernes
89 (April 1953), 1571-1629; Claude Lefort, "De
la reponse a la question," Les Temps Modernes 104(July 1954), 157-84. Also Pierre Chaulieu [Cornelius Castoriadis],
"Sartre, le Stalinisme et les ouvriers," SE, Nr. 12 (August-September 1953), 63-88;
English translation: "Sartre, Stalinism, and the Workers," in:
Political and Social Writings, 1, 207-41.
36. In a letter to Pannekoek,
dated
37 Castoriadis,
"An Interview," 134-5.
38. Alex Carrier, "Le
cartel des syndicats autonomes,"
SE, Nr. 1 (March-April 1949), 62-77; Daniel Mothe,
"Le probleme de I'unité
syndicale," SE, Nr. 14(April-June 1954), 27-37.
39. G. Fontenis,
"Presence dans les syndicats,"
SE, Nr. 15-16 (October-December 1954), 60-5; and with a similar content: Henri Féraud, "L'unité syndicale." SE,
Nr. 17(July-September 1955), 61-5.
44 G.Vivier, "La vie en usine," SE, Nrs. Il, 12, 14,
15-16, 17 (November 1952 -September 1955).
45."Un journal ouvrier
chez Renault," SE, Nr. 15-16 (October-December 1954), 71-82. More
theoretically on the setup of the paper: Daniel MothC,
"Le probleme du
journal ouvrier," SE, Nr.17 (July-September
1955), 26-48. Also, on the activities at Renault: Daniel Mothe,
Jounrnal d'un ouvrier
(19~6-58) (
46.
"Comité de Liaison," SE, Nr. 24 (May-June 1958), 160.
47. Pierre Chaulieu (Comelius Castoriadis], "Perspectives
de la crise francaise,"
SE, Nr. 25 (July-August 1958),41-66.
48. The Dutch observers sometimes combined "right
wing" and "centre" into "right wing," so as to more
easily create a contrast with the "left wing."
49. "Splitsing in de Franse groep 'Socialisme
ou Barbarie': Brieven uit Frankrijk,"
Spartacus 18, (11 October -
50 The growth of the organization - comparatively
speaking of course - is shown by the increased sales of the paper to 700-1000
copies per issue and the fact that discussion meetings were attended by more
than 100 people. See Castoriadis, "An
Interview," 134.
51. Lefort, "An
Interview," 177.
52 For Lyotard,
autobiographically, see: "Nes en 1925," Les
Temps Modernes 32 (1948), 2052-7; he was the
53 Paul Cardan
[Cornelius Castoriadis]. "Prolétariat et organisation,"
SE, Nr. 27 (April-May 1959), 53-88.
54. Claude Lefort, "Organisation et parti,"
SL~, Nr. 26 (November-December 1958), 120-34. Castoriadis
replied to Lefort in: "Prolétariat
et organisation (suite et fin)," SE, Nr. 28
(July-August 1959), 41-72.
55. On the history of the
ILO-ICO: "Entretien avec H. Simon - De la
scission avec 'Socialisme ou
Barbarie' a la rupture avec I.C.O.," Anti-Mythes 6 (September 1974); Lefort,
"An Interview," 179-80; Richard Gombin, The
Origins of Modenl Leftism (Harmondsworth 1975), 112-6; "Grafrede
voor een groep," Daad eil Gedackte 10, 1 (January
1974), 4-10.
56. [Henri] Simon, 'L' Travailleurs,
syndicats et
militants," Noir er Rouge 19 (November 1961),
10-33. This article may be read as a programmatic text of the ICO. Noir et Rouge was an anarchist journal in which ICO members like
Henri Simon and Yvon Bourdet,
though not themselves anarchists, published theoretically orientated articles.
57. Yvon Bourdet,
Qu 'est-ce qui fait courir les militants? (
58. Pierre Chaulieu [Comelius Castoriadis], "Sur la dynamique du capitalisme," SE, Nr. 12
(August-September 1953), 1-22 and Nr. 13 (January-March 1954), 60-81.
59
60.Paul Cardan
[Cornelius Castoriadis], "Le mouvement
révolutionnaire sous le capitalisme moderne," SE,
Nr. 31 (December 1960-February 1961), 51-81; Nr. 32 (April-June 1961), 84-111;
Nr. 33 (December 1961-February 1962), 60-85.
61. Lyotard, "Pierre Souyri."
62. Paul Cardan [Comelius Castoriadis], "Marxisme et theorie revolutionnaire," SE, Nr. 36 (April-June 1964), 1-25;
Nr. 37 (July-September 1964), 18-53; Nr. 38 (October-December 1964), 44-86; Nr.
39 (March-April 1965), 16-66.
63. Castoriadis, "An
Interview," 142.
64 (La suspension de la publication de Socialisme ou Barbarie,"
quoted here from the reprint in Comelius Castoriadis, L'experience du mouvement ouvrier,
vol. II (Paris 1974), 425.
65. The closeness that Lefort
felt with Merleau-Ponty is clearly shown by the fact
that he wrote a subtle postscript for the last, uncompleted, work by his
friend, Le Visible et I'lnvisible - suivide notes de travail. Texte établi par Claude Lefort accompagné d'un avertissement et d'une postface(
66. See, among others, Merleau-Ponty's
Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945), Humanisme et Terreur (1947), Eloge de la Philosophie (1953)
and Les Aventures de la Dialeclique
(1955), all published by Gallimard. Beside the Eloge, which is more of a concise expose, these books all
refer to political theory.
67. Lefort, "An
Interview," 181.
68. Castoriadis, too, was
influenced by Merleau-Ponty. He and Lefort therefore both delivered a contribution to the
special issue which the periodical L'Are devoted to Merleau-Ponty.
69. Until the middle of the 1950s Edgar Morin had been
a member of the PCF. He headed Arguments, the magazine for 'doubters,' which
appeared between 1956 and 1962, and also published in Socialisme
ou Barbarie now and again. See
also Edgar Morin, Autocritique (Paris 1959), and
Jean-Baptiste Pages, Comprendre
Edgar Morin (
70. Jean-Mate Coudray [Comelius Castotiadis], Claude Lefort and Edgar Morin, Mai 1968: La Breche
(Paris 1968; reprint: Brussels 1988).
71. See in English: Lefort,
Political Forms of Modern Society, and Castoriadis,
Crossroads in the Labyrinth. Trans. Kate Soper and
Martin H. Ryle(Brighten 1984). See also: Dick Howard, The Marxian Legacy (
Socialisme ou Barbarie: A French
Revolutionary Group (1949-65),