Foreword and Acknowledgments
by David Berry
This volume contains a selection of texts by the French revolutionary activist and historian Daniel Guérin (1904–1988), published here in English translation for the first time. They were written between the 1950s and 1980s and appeared in France in a series of collections: Jeunesse du socialisme libertaire [Youth of Libertarian Socialism] (Paris: Riviere, 1959), Pour un Marxisme libertaire [For a Libertarian Marxism] (Paris: Laffont, 1969), and A la recherche d’un communisme libertaire [In Search of a Libertarian Communism] (Paris: Spartacus, 1984). A further version of the collection was published after his death: Pour le communisme libertaire [For Libertarian Communism]... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
[1] Daniel Guérin, Front populaire, Révolution manquée. Témoignage militant
(Aries: Editions Actes Sud, 1977), p. 29. All translations in this introduction are the present author’s, unless stated otherwise.
[2] In Questions de méthode, quoted in Ian Birchall, ‘Sartre’s Encounter with Daniel Guérin’, Sartre Studies International vol. 2, no. 1 (1996), p. 46.
[3] See Louis Janover, ‘Daniel Guérin, le trouble-fetê’ in L’Homme et la société no. 94 (1989), thematic issue on ‘Dissonances dans la Revolution’, pp. 83–93.
[4] Letter to Marceau Pivert, 18 November 1947, Bibliotheque de Documentation Internationale Contem... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Introduction
The Search for a Libertarian Communism:
Daniel Guérin and the “Synthesis” of Marxism and Anarchism
I have a horror of sects, of compartmentalization, of people who are separated by virtually nothing and who nevertheless face each other as if across an abyss.
— Daniel Guérin[1]
As he once wrote of the fate suffered by anarchism, Daniel Guérin (1904–1988) has himself been the victim of unwarranted neglect and, in some circles at least, of undeserved discredit. For although many people know of Guérin, relatively few seem aware of the breadth of his contribution. His writings cover a vast range of subjects, from fascism and the French Revolution to the history of... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
For a Libertarian Communism
Why “Libertarian Communist”?
My education was anti-Stalinist Marxist. But for a good long while I have been foolhardy enough to draw heavily on the treasure chest of libertarian thought, ever relevant and alive on condition that it is first stripped of a not insignificant number of childish, utopian, and romantic notions as little useful as they are out of date.
Hence a misunderstanding that is all but inevitable but embittered by a certain bad faith on the part of my opponents: the Marxists have turned their backs on me as an anarchist, and the anarchists, because of my Marxism, have not always wanted to view me as one of them.
A young, neophyte—and hence sectarian—Marxist even th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Appendices
Appendix I:
The Libertarian Communist Platform of 1971[281]
I—Individual and collective revolts punctuate the history of humanity, which is a succession of exploitative societies. In every era thinkers have arrived at an idea that calls their society into question. But it was with the advent of modern capitalist society that the division of society into two fundamental, antagonistic classes clearly appeared, and it is through class struggle, the motor of the evolution of capitalist society, that the road was constructed that leads from revolt to the achieving of revolutionary consciousness.
Today, because it has changed form, class struggle is sometimes denied by those who insist on either the bourgeoisification a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
