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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[20] Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[54] Kraus interviewed in Rebels in Retrospect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[62] Kempton, Provo, pp.91–104.

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

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

[65] Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney.’

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

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

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

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

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

[71] Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[82] Minchin, Interview.

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

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

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

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

[87] Prebble, Interview.

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

[89] Prebble, Interview.

[90] Minchin, Interview.

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

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

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

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

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

[96] McDonagh, Interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[103] McDonagh, Interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[118] McDonagh, 151, §1.

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

[120] McDonagh, Interview.

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

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

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

[124] Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[135] Bolstad, Interview.

[136] Bolstad, Interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[144] Minchin, Interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[155] Prebble, Interview.

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

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

[158] Sheehan, Anarchism, p. 141.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[190] Graffito in the streets of Athens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[247] See, for instance, Foucault 1988.

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

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

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

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

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

[253] To begin with, see Foucault 1980.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[281] Ib., p. 798.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[295] Ib, p. 211–212.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[324] Many thanks to David Goodway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[387] Durham Chronicle, 26 July 1912.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[416] The Miners ’ Next Step, p.13.

[417] The Miners’ Next Step, p.21.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[428] Newcastle Journal, 15 March 1955.

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

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

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

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

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

[434] Newcastle Journal, 17 March 1955.

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

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

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

[438] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912.

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

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

[441] Blaydon Courier, 25 January 1913.

[442] Blaydon Courier, 18 October 1913.

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

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

[445] Blaydon Courier, 18 October 1913.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[457] Freedom, July 1913.

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

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

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

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

[462] Freedom, July 1913.

[463] Freedom, September 1913.

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

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

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

[467] The Herald of Revolt, February 1913.

[468] Walker, ‘George Harvey,’ p.21.

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

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

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

[472] Evening Chronicle, 7 November 1912.

[473] Evening Chronicle, 7 November 1912.

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

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

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

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

[478] Freedom, May 1914.

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

[480] Newcastle Journal, 15 March 1955

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

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

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

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

[485] White, ‘Syndicalism,’ p.110.

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

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

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

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

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

[491] Newcastle Journal, 16 March 1955.

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

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

[494] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912.

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

[496] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912.

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

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

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

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

[501] The Herald of Revolt, February 1913.

[502] Freedom, September 1913.

[503] Blaydon Courier, 19 October 1912.

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

[505] Durham Chronicle, 14 August 1926.

[506] Evening Chronicle, 7 November 1912.

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

[508] Durham Chronicle, 5 December 1913.

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

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

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

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

[513] For evidence of this see the report of the October 1912 conference in Chopwell.

[514] It is worth noting that Leszek Kolakowski also ranks Sorel highly in comparison with other Marxists: ‘As a writer he stood far above the orthodox Marxists, but he had insufficient command over his talent’ (1981: 153).

[515] Mariátegui is perhaps the only major Marxist writer to consistently champion Sorel, whom he does not hesitate to mention in the same breath as Lenin and Marx (see, e.g., 1994: 261; 1318).

[516] Significantly, many of the commentators who maintain that Sorel’s thought lends itself to reactionary or fascistic uses, or that Sorel himself was essentially a right-wing thinker, furnish very little argument to support their claim. For some examples of this tendency to casually link Sorel to the Right (or as much to the Right as to the Left), see Woodcock 1962: 323; Horowitz 1964b: 592; Lichtheim 1971: 116; Joll 1980: 194; and Marshall 1993: 442.

[517] What is more, there are entries for Sorel in various reference works on Marxism (e.g., Jennings 1983 and Gorman 1985), and Kolakowski devotes a chapter to Sorel in his Main Currents of Marxism (1981), even though he believes that Sorel is a Marxist only ‘in a very loose sense’ (14). McLellan (1998), however, mentions Sorel on only one page (193), and merely in order to register his influence on Gramsci.

[518] ‘So Proudhonian in inspiration’ (1999: 292) is how Sorel himself characterizes the Reflections on Violence in his ‘In Defense of Lenin,’ an essay written in 1919 and added to the fourth (French) edition of the Reflections as an appendix.

[519] ‘But one must always bear in mind that Sorel was really no Marxist, but a Proudhonist’ (Lichtheim 1971: 113). Coming from Lichtheim, this can hardly be taken as praise. ‘What he [Proudhon] really represented,’ writes Lichtheim elsewhere, ‘was a fusion of backwoods barbarism with the mental chaos typical of the autodidact’ (Lichtheim 1973: 427). In any event, it is worth noting that the Comintern likewise considered Sorel a ‘Proudhonist.’ As Carr (1962) notes, ‘After Sorel died the Communist International, the official journal of Comintern, opened its columns to a lengthy, if critical, appreciation of this ‘reactionary petty-bourgeois Proudhonist and anarcho-syndicalist’ who had rallied to the defense of the proletarian revolution’ (162–3).

[520] Somewhat incongruously, Horowitz also characterizes Sorel as a ‘modern-day’ anarchist in a subsequent chapter in the same work (1964b: 592). In any case, in his 1961 book on Sorel, Radicalism and the Revolt against Reason, Horowitz also describes Sorel as an adherent of anarchism (160).

[521] Roger Scruton also effectively assimilates Sorel’s thought to anarchism, for he describes Sorel’s project as an attempt to synthesize syndicalist and anarchist ideas (1984: 456). For his part, Lenin cites one of Sorel’s texts in a brief paragraph listing works that offer ‘a critique of Marx from the point of view of anarchism,’ but refers to Sorel himself as a ‘syndicalist’ (1974a: 91). In any case, just as some Marxists dispute Sorel’s Marxist credentials, some anarchists and writers sympathetic to anarchism tend to minimize Sorel’s affinities with the anarchist tradition. For example, in his history of anarchism, George Woodcock writes that Sorel’s ‘place in anarchist history is peripheral’ (1962: 323) and scarcely discusses Sorel’s ideas. Similarly, Peter Marshall devotes only two (ill-informed) paragraphs to Sorel in his encyclopedic survey of anarchist thought (1993: 442). Both Woodcock and Marshall appear to believe that their extremely cursory treatment of Sorel is justified in light of Sorel’s apparently negligible influence on anarchist thinkers and activists (which proves especially odd in Woodcock’s case, since the subtitle of his book is ‘A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements’ [emphasis added]). Had Woodcock and Marshall taken more of an interest in the actual content of Sorel’s theories, presumably they would have seen fit to accord Sorel more space in their respective histories.

[522] I should perhaps emphasize that I am not saying that Sorel himself made any such claim, for he did not, at least to my knowledge.

[523] Unlike the references to other texts given in the body of essay, all references to the Reflections (including the appendixes) will contain the page numbers alone.

[524] Sorel goes on: ‘to meet with insults the homilies of the defenders of human fraternity and to respond by blows to the advances of the propagators of social peace....’

[525] In short: ‘The day when the bosses perceive that they have nothing to gain by works which promote social justice or by democracy, they will understand that they have been badly advised by the people who persuaded them to abandon their trade of creators of productive forces for the noble profession of educators of the proletariat’ (77–78).

[526] Cf. p. 251. Sorel also claims that insofar as concessions are granted to the workers, a society will find itself in a state of economic decline or decadence—which he distinguishes from a period of economic crisis (127)—when the revolution finally occurs (79–80). To the extent that economic decline implies a loss of certain gains achieved in advanced societies (gains that we identify with civilization), violence can be said to prevent a lapse into (relative) barbarism in this sense, too. It is worth pointing out that this claim is far less plausible than Sorel’s main thesis: while significant concessions from employers may very well sap or erode workers’ will to revolution, it seems unlikely that these concessions will inevitably contribute to economic decline. Indeed, employers often choose to offer certain benefits to their workers on the assumption that these concessions will improve morale among their employes, and therefore raise productivity.

[527] ‘[M]en who are participating in great social movements always picture their coming action in the form of images of battle in which their cause is certain to triumph. I propose to give the name of “myths” to these constructions... ’ (20). As I note below, ‘Marx’s catastrophic revolution’ (Ibid.) is, for Sorel, one such myth.

[528] Kolakowski also provides an illuminating characterization of Sorel’s conception of myth: ‘Its value is. [as] a force inspiring and organizing the militant consciousness of a self-contained group.... Only by means of a myth can a fighting group maintain its solidarity, heroism, and the spirit of self-sacrifice’ (1981: 160).

[529] ‘[T]he proletarian general strike. awakens in the depth of the soul a sentiment of the sublime proportionate to the conditions of a gigantic struggle’ (159). For a similarly rhapsodic characterization of the revolutionary general strike, and strikes generally, see 118.

[530] Sorel himself stresses, however, that he is by no means a slavish or dogmatic follower of Marx (see, e.g., 171), and that ‘the new school does not in the least feel itself bound to admire the illusions, the faults and the errors of the man who did so much to work out revolutionary ideas’ (172; italics in the original).

[531] On the material preconditions for socialism and the philosophy of history see 128, 73, 80 and 129; on the importance of class struggle, see 85, 34, 182 and 126; as regards the state, see 18, 161 and 30; on the question of utopias and utopianism, see 28–29,129, 224, 118–9 and 132; regarding ‘the primacy of production,’ see 138; on the nature and desirability of socialist revolution, see 155, 126 and 140; concerning the stated conception of socialist society, see 155, 238 and 171; and as regards the principle of proletarian self-emancipation, see 32. Some of these passages also contain more general statements of sympathy with Marx’s views, i.e., comments that express Sorel’s embrace of Marx without referring to any specific topic or thesis. If references to Marx and Marxism abound in the Reflections on Violence, references to anarchism and anarchists are, by contrast, relatively few in number, and for the most of an incidental character.

[532] ‘[T]he official socialists,’ remarks Sorel, ‘.wish to admire in Marx that which is not Marxist’ (172).

[533] It is no surprise, then, that in 1921 the Comintern should have instructed the French Communist Party to ‘criticize in a friendly by also clear and firm manner those anarcho-syndicalist tendencies which reject the dictatorship of the proletariat. ’ (Adler 1983: 282).

[534] For some typically caustic remarks on the failings of parliamentary socialism, see 67–8; 111; and 154.

[535] It is worth recalling that Bakunin himself was a proponent of the general strike (see, e.g., 1985: 149150), and that his views on the value of strikes more generally sound like an anticipation of Sorel (see, e.g., 1972: 304–307). It is likewise worth recalling here that according to Emma Goldman syndicalism constitutes ‘the economic expression of Anarchism’ (1972: 68).

[536] Goldman mentions Sorel in her essay ‘Syndicalism: Its Theory and Practice’ (which echoes some of the themes found in Reflections on Violence), as does Rocker in his classic work Anarcho-Syndicalism. Yet both authors refer to Sorel merely to counter the notion that the essential ideas of revolutionary syndicalism derive from his writings (see Goldman 1972: 65; 67, and Rocker 1989: 134).

[537] One might also convey the anarcho-Marxist tenor of Sorel’s work in negative terms, so to speak, and this is in effect Kolakowski’s approach: ‘his [Sorel’s] criticism of Marxist orthodoxy has much in common with that of the anarchists. He attacks anarchism from a Marxist standpoint, yet on some points he criticizes Marx from the angle of Bakunin or Proudhon’ (1981: 170).

[538] At least one important Marxist thinker, Mariátegui, explicitly claims that Sorel’s syndicalism is consistent with Marxism (1994: 206). Unfortunately, Mariategui does not try to defend this claim.

[539] Berlin puts the point as follows: ‘Sorel rejects everything in Marx that seems to him political—his notion of the workers’ party, his theory of, and practical measures for, the organization of the revolution, his determinism, above all the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Sorel regards as a sinister recrudescence of the worst elements of repressive Jacobinism. Even the anarchist classless society with which true human history is to begin is virtually ignored by Sorel’ (1980: 312). For his part, Kolakowski explicitly links Sorel’s ‘anti-political’ orientation to anarchism: ‘he shared with the anarchists their basic premise of the need to do away with all state institutions and their refusal to take part in parliamentary life or to support “political socialism”’ (1981: 171).

[540] ‘Both Marx and Engels had asserted the primacy of the political struggle over the economic. Trades unions, in their estimation, were essentially defensive organizations.... It became part of Marxist orthodoxy to argue that long before the exacting pre-conditions for a successful general strike could be realized, the electoral and political ascendancy of social democracy would render it redundant’ (Harding 1996: 68).

The separation of ‘the political’ and ‘the economic’ is of course in many ways quite artificial, little more, at bottom, than an analytical construct—and one that often serves ‘bourgeois’ interests (or at least bourgeois mystification), as Marxists rightly point out. Even so, the distinction does seem useful with respect to the kind of contrast that I wish to establish here.

[541] At least one well-informed commentator, E.H. Carr, is inclined to agree with Sorel: ‘Syndicalism is, in Sorel’s eyes, the true heir of Marxism. It is anti-political in two senses, both of them Marxist. In the first place it rejects the State, as Marx did and as most contemporary Marxists did not; it seeks not to capture the machinery of the State—much less to find places for socialist ministers in bourgeois governments— but to destroy it. Secondly, it asserts, as Marx did, the essential primacy of economics over politics. Political action is not class action: only economic action can be truly revolutionary. The syndicats, the trade unions, being not political parties but organizations of the workers, are alone capable of such action’ (1962: 157).

[542] According to the First International’s ‘Provisional Rules,’ drafted by Marx, ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves’ (Marx 1974: 82). In his ‘Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke, and Others,’ written in 1879, Marx reaffirms the paramount importance of this principle (1978a: 555), as does Engels in his ‘Preface’ to the 1888 English edition of the Communist Manifesto: ‘And as our notion from the very beginning [i.e., the years preceding the appearance of the Manifesto] was that “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.’ ’(1971, 136). Marx also cites the formulation from the ‘Provisional Rules’ (in a slightly modified form) in the ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’ (1978b: 532), written in 1875. For discussion of the principle of proletarian self-emancipation in Marx and Engels’ thought, see Draper 1971; 1977: 213–234; and 1978: 147–165.

[543] For a brief overview of some of the different attitudes toward strikes encountered within the history of Marxist thought, see Hyman 1983: 469–471. Summarizing the general attitude among Marxists, Harding writes, ‘For Marxists, the policy of the general strike was associated with the infancy of the labor movement’ (1996: 69). Sorel suggests, however, that the truth is actually the opposite of what, according to Harding, most Marxists believe: ‘Revolutionary syndicalism is not. as many believe. the first confused form of the working-class movement, which is bound in the end to free itself from this youthful error. It has been, on the contrary, the product of an improvement brought about by men who had just arrested a deviation towards bourgeois ideas’ (35).

[544] Harding (1996: 69) attributes this dictum to Marx himself, but does not provide a source for his claim. The phrase is normally attributed to German Social Democrat Ignaz Auer (1846–1907).

[545] Apocalypse is, according to Sorel, also an appropriate description: ‘Apocalypse.in reality corresponds perfectly to the general strike which, for revolutionary syndicalists, represents the advent of the new world to come’ (Sorel 1961: 251).

[546] The corollary of a view that we might call radical anti-substitutionism, this position has undoubtedly found more prominent Marxist adherents than any of the other three positions discussed here.

[547] Suzi (Susan) Weissman is the author of Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope, and Editor of The Ideas of Victor Serge, and Victor Serge: Russia Twenty Years After. She is on the editorial boards of Against the Current and Critique.

[548] He is identified as the Bard of the LO by Richard Greeman; the journalist of the LO by Ernest Mandel; the Historian of the LO by Susan Weissman.

[549] Memoirs, p. 34. Serge wrote a novel about the pre-war anarchist movement in France Les Hommes perdus which was confiscated in the Soviet Union. It has never been recovered.

[550] While recognizing that even the anarchist movement was populated with authoritarian figures, from Bakunin to Makhno, Serge saw the essence of anarchism as the absence of authority; but authoritarianism can exist among those who oppose authority. Serge, L’Anarchisme, unpublished essay [#8], written in the forties (no date provided), Serge archives.

[551] Serge archive, no date, archive essay #8.

[552] Ibid.

[553] Memoirs, p. 114.

[554] Ibid.

[555] Serge was referring to the revolution and civil war generation of Bolsheviks, those schooled in making a revolution and fighting for its survival.

[556] Victor Serge to Sidney Hook, 10 July 1943.

[557] Although the GPU (State Political Directorate) was transformed into the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in 1934, it was often still called the GPU.

[558] For a detailed discussion of their political differences see Susan Weissman, “Kronstadt and the Fourth International,” in The Serge-Trotsky Papers, Edited by David Cotterill, Pluto Press, 1994, pp. 150191.

[559] “I recalled, for use against Trotsky himself, a sentence of astounding vision which he had written in 1914 I think: ‘Bolshevism may very well be an excellent instrument for the conquest of power, but after that it will reveal its counter-revolutionary aspects....’ I came to the conclusion that our Opposition had simultaneously contained two opposing lines of significance. For the great majority ... it meant resistance to totalitarianism in the name of the democratic ideals expressed at the beginning of the Revolution; for a number of our Old Bolshevik leaders it meant, on the contrary, the defense of doctrinal orthodoxy which, while not excluding a certain tendency towards democracy, was authoritarian through and through. These two mingled strains had, between 1923 and 1928 surrounded Trotsky’s vigorous personality with a tremendous aura. If, in his exile from the USSR, he had made himself the ideologist of a renewed socialism, critical in outlook and fearing diversity less than dogmatism, perhaps he would have attained a new greatness.” Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 348–350.

[560] Serge’s thinking about post WWII economic and political development was shaped by the terrible experience of the twin totalitarianisms of fascism and Stalinism. The condition of humanity had been worsened by these regimes: the working class movement was deeply damaged by Fascism, and Stalinism threatened the fate of socialism everywhere. Neither labor militancy in the west nor the colonial revolution in the east raised his spirits so long as the Soviet Union was in a position to crush revolutionary movements to its left and channel the others into anti-imperialist national liberation struggles that would lead to an extension of Soviet totalitarianism, a far cry from socialism. See Victor Serge, Carnets, (Actes Sud, 1985), p. 181.

[561] “Necesidad de una renovacion del Socialismo,” Mundo, Libertad y Socialismo, Mexico, junio de 1943.

[562] “Pour un Renouvellement du Socialisme,” Masses/Socialisme et Liberte (no. 3, juin 1946).

[563] Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, 8 October 1945, Macdonald Papers, Yale University Library.

[564] 9/11, Hurricane Katrina 2005, financial meltdown 2008–9.

[565] For a fuller discussion, see Susan Weissman, “Disintegrating Democracy: From the Promise of the 1905 Soviet to Corrupt Democratic Forms,” Critique 41, April 2007, pp. 103–117.

[566] Carnets, 10 Dec. 1944, p. 182

[567] Workers individual rights have improved, winning protection from discrimination at work, but at the expense of union rights and protections — which have been eroded and often exist in name only. For a nuanced discussion of the relationship of rights consciousness to the labor movement (in the U.S.) see Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, (Princeton University Press, 2002), chapter 5.

[568] The colors red and black have concrete historical foundations of symbols of political and social struggle, but we should not ignore the reductionism and even regimentation that such symbols may reinforce. To reduce the interplay of competing or converging political tendencies to physical properties is, in my estimation, too reminiscent of spectator sports and the emotional conditioning that characterize them.

[569] With Karl Mannheim, I would call “utopian” that which refers to the idea and will to realize a yet non existing but desirable condition founded upon the belief in the necessity and possibility of improvement, and opposed to the belief that what exists must be preserved against such attempts at fundamental change. See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia.

[570] This was not only the case in the U.S.S.R. During the last 1930s and 1940s, for example, the Communist Party of the U.S.A. called their orientation “twentieth-century Americanism.”

[571] Which is likely the reason Jack London named, in The Iron Heel (1907), his quintessential revolutionary Earnest Everhard.

[572] According to Sartre, “there is in fact an ‘evanescence’ of bad faith” that “vacillates continually between good faith and cynicism” belonging “to the kind of psychic structures which we might call metastable, it presents nonetheless an autonomous and durable form. It can even be the normal aspect of life for a very great number of people. A person can live in bad faith, which does not mean that he does not have abrupt awakenings to cynicism or to good faith, but which implies a constant and particular style of life.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel Barnes, New York, Washington Square Press, 1969 [1943], p. 90.

[573] Those evoked in homilies such as “The end justifies the means” or “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

[574] See, for example, Len De Caux, The Living Spirit of the Wobblies, New York, International Publishers, 1978, Philip S. Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World 1905–1917, New York, International Publishers, 1965, and Clancy Sigal, Going Away: A Report, A Memoir, New York, Carol and Graf Publishers, 1961.

[575] Jeunesse du socialisme libertaire, Marcel Riviere, Paris, 1959.

[576] Andres Nin, leader of the POUM, quoted by Rene Lefeuvre in his foreword to Andre and Dori Prudhommeaux’s Catalogne 1936–1937, Cahiers Spartacus n°6, March 1937.

[577] About Boris Souvarine, refer i.a.to Jean-Louis Panne, Boris Souvarine, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1993.

[578] Cercle communiste democratique, Declaration et statuts, Librairie du travail, Paris, 1931, quoted in Critique sociale, Les vies de Boris Souvarine, www.critique-sociale.info, 2008.

[579] On Monde, refer i.a.to Bernard Frederick, Confrontation entre Henri Barbusse et le Komintern, Fondation Gabriel Peri, 2006, and Guessler Normand, Henri Barbusse and his Monde (1928–1935), Journal of Contemporary History, 1976, 11.

[580] The Association des ecrivains et artistes revolutionnaires (AEAR), the French section of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers, will be launched in 1933.

[581] Otto Maschl (1898–1973). An Austrian Communist, he acts as a correspondent in Berlin for I’Humanite from 1921 to 1923 at the request of Boris Souvarine, then teaches economics in Moscow for the International until 1927, when he resigns.

[582] Hippolyte Etchebehere (1900–1936), an Argentine revolutionary, expelled from the Communist party in 1925 for his support of the Left opposition. Leader of a POUM militia column, he dies in August 1936 fighting Franco’s troops. His testimonial on the Nazis’ accession to power is still available (1933: la tragedie du proletariat allemand, Spartacus, Paris, 2003).

[583] 1894–1984. A typesetter, he’s an avid reader and learns Russian. During the First World War, he’s a member of the French military delegation to Russia. In 1918, he refuses to take part in military operations against the Soviets and joins the Groupe communiste frangais in Moscow. He is then employed during several years by the International and, an opponent to the regime, returns to France in 1927. After a year spent in opposition in the Communist party, he launches in Limoges a Union des travailleurs revolutionnaires.

[584] Angelo Tasca, one of the founding members of the Italian Communist party. Made a member of the Executive of the Communist International in 1929, he is expelled that same year. He was on the editorial board of Monde.

[585] Andre Ariat (1904–1983). A teacher, he had been a member of the Communist party, then in succession of Opposition groups, of the Cercle communiste Marx et Lenine, of the first Trotskyst groups and most recently of the Gauche communiste, with Alfred Rosmer and Kurt and Katia Landau.

[586] 1902–1968. He writes in Masses under the name Jean Cello. He will also use that of Andre Prunier.

[587] See Marie-Christine Bardouillet, La Librairie du Travail, Francois Maspero, Paris, 1977.

[588] Edouard Labin (1910–1982). A member of the Communist Youth, expelled in 1930; briefly a member of the Ligue communiste, he joins the Cercle communiste democratique. He becomes a member of the SFIO in 1934.

[589] Aaron Goldenberg (1896–1993). He attends the second congress of the Communist International as a delegate of the Socialist Youth, and then the fourth congress. Until 1928, he works for the Moscow Marx-Engels Institute and the International, in particular with D. Riazanov, B. Souvarine and V. Serge, and expresses his opposition to the prevailing policies. He then distances himself from the Communist party.

[590] Parti d’uniteproletarienne, born from the merger in 1930 of several groups of former Communist party members. It had a significant electoral influence in several cities.

[591] See i.a. Robert Mencherini, La liberation et les entreprises sous gestion ouvriere. Marseille 1944–1948. L’Harmattan, Paris, 1994.

[592] Ida Gilman (1901–1973). A Russian anarchist, she took part in Paris in the debate around the Platform. In 1938, she had submitted her Kronstadt Commune to the group of the Revolution proletarienne, which had not wanted to publish it, finding it too harsh on Trotsky.

[593] Gilles Martinet, Partis et mouvements dans la France nouvelle, Questions d’aujourd’hui n°35, Editions du Chene, Paris, 1945.

[594] David Rousset, Autour du Rassemblement democratique revolutionnaire», in Les Temps modernes n°36, Paris, 1948.

[595] Ibid.

[596] About the transformation of the Mouvement populaire des familles into the Mouvement de liberation du peuple, see Cahiers du GRMF (Groupement de recherche sur les mouvements familiaux), in particular issue n°9, 1995.

[597] 1944–2005. A member of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group, then of the PSU. His writings include Le luxembourgisme aujourd’hui, Spartacus, Paris, 1970; L’autogestiongeneralisee, Christian Bourgois, Paris, 1979; Rosa Luxemburg, la Rose rouge, Picollec, Paris, 2002; and, with Yvon Bourdet, De l’autogestion, Seghers, Paris, 1975.

[598] Comite pour L ’Autogestion Socialiste, a forum of the PSU, the Alliance marxiste revolutionnaire, the Centers d’initiative communiste (set-up by former Communist party members), Objectif socialiste, and nonparty movements such as La vie nouvelle and the Groupes d’action municipale (GAM).

[599] See contributions of the PSU’s “Courant communiste autogestionnaire,” or “courant ‘C,’” to its IXth, Xth et XIth congresses (1974, 1977 and 1979) or, for a synthetic approach, Andre Fontaine, Les socialismes: l’Histoire sans fin, Spartacus, Paris, 1992.

[600] The Alternatifs publish a periodical, Rouge et vert.

[601] This is why, and to this day, each book carries a chronological number.

[602] The list and description of available titles can be found on http://atheles.org/spartacus/livres/index.html

[603] Saul Newman, Unstable universalities:poststructuralism and radical politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 15.

[604] Todd May, The Political Theory ofPoststructuralist Anarchism (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 75.

[605] Saul Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan: anti-authoritarianism and the dislocation of power, p. 55.

[606] May, The Political Theory of Poststructuralist Anarchism, p. 60.

[607] The first conclusion is reached by Jesse Cohn, ‘What is Postanarchism “Post”?,’ Postmodern Culture 13(1) (2002) <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v013/13.1cohn.html>, last accessed 31 July, 2009, and Jesse Cohn and Shawn Wilbur, ‘What’s Wrong with Postanarchism?’

[608] An exception is Benjamin Franks, ‘Postanarchism: A critical assessment,’ Journal of Political Ideologies 12(2) (2007), 127–145, who while reviewing some of the common anarchist critiques of post-anarchism also offers a short defense of Marx and class politics (137).

[609] Todd May, for example, suggests that we should go ‘in the direction not of Marx’s writings, but in that of their legacy in political philosophy. It is Marxism, rather than Marx, that we must address.’ May, The Political Theory of Poststructuralist Anarchism, p. 18.

[610] Karl Marx ‘Theses on Feuerbach,’ in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works Volume 5 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), p. 4.

[611] Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan, pp. 13–14.

[612] Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 899.

[613] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Allen Lane, 1977), p. 138.

[614] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 26

[615] Etienne Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, trans. James Swenson (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 138.

[616] In his recent book on Jacques Ranciere, Todd May suggests that Iris Marion Young usefully argues that capitalism reduces politics to economics. He does not, however, acknowledge that this argument is made by Marx, instead dismissing Marx as an example of what Ranciere calls ‘metapolitics,’ i.e. the dissolution of politics into a nonpolitical realm (in Marx, the economy). See Todd May, The Political Thought of Jacques Ranciere: Creating Equality (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), pp. 28, 44–46.

[617] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), p. 379

[618] Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 91–92.