Libertarian Marxism
Encyclopedia
Libertarian Marxism refers to a broad scope of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian
aspects of Marxism
. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism
, emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism and its derivatives, such as Stalinism
, Maoism
, and Trotskyism
. Libertarian Marxism is also critical of reformist positions, such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse
and The Civil War in France
; emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class
to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state
to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism
, Libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism
.
Libertarian Marxism includes such currents as Luxemburgism
, council communism
, left communism
, Socialisme ou Barbarie
, the Johnson-Forest tendency
, world socialism, Lettrism
/Situationism and operaismo/autonomism
, and New Left
. Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists
. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Anton Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya
, CLR James, Antonio Negri
, Cornelius Castoriadis
, Maurice Brinton
, Guy Debord
, Daniel Guérin
, Ernesto Screpanti
and Raoul Vaneigem
.
movement originating in Germany
and the Netherlands
in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany
(KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within Marxism
, and also within libertarian socialism. The central argument of council communism, in contrast to those of Social democracy
and Leninist
communism
, is that workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural and legitimate form of working class
organisation and government power. This view is opposed to the reformist and Bolshevik
stress on vanguard parties
, parliament
s, or the state
.
The core principle of council communism is that the state and the economy should be managed by workers' councils, composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run "bureaucratic socialism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship
. Council communists support a workers' democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils.
The Russian
word for council is "soviet
", and during the early years of the revolution worker's councils were politically significant in Russia
. It was to take advantage of the aura
of workplace power that the word became used by Lenin for various political organs. Indeed, the name "Supreme Soviet
", by which the parliament was called; and that of the Soviet Union
itself make use of this terminology, but they do not imply any decentralization
.
Furthermore, council communists held a critique of the Soviet Union
as a capitalist state, believing that the Bolshevik
revolution in Russia became a "bourgeois revolution" when a party bureaucracy replaced the old feudal aristocracy
. Although most felt the Russian Revolution
was working class in character, they believed that, since capitalist relations still existed (because the workers had no say in running the economy), the Soviet Union ended up as a state capitalist country, with the state replacing the individual capitalist. Thus, council communists support workers' revolutions, but oppose one-party dictatorships.
Council communists also believed in diminishing the role of the party to one of agitation
and propaganda
, rejected all participation in elections or parliament, and argued that workers should leave the reactionary trade unions and form one big revolutionary union.
Left communism' is the range of communist
viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist
and proletarian
than the views of Leninism
held by the Communist International after its first and during its second congress.
Left Communists see themselves to the left of Leninists
(whom they tend to see as 'left of capital', not socialists), Anarchists
(some of whom they consider internationalist socialists) as well as some other revolutionary socialist tendencies (for example De Leonists
, who they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances).
Although she lived before left communism became a distinct tendency, Rosa Luxemburg
has heavily influenced most left communists, both politically and theoretically. Proponents of left communism have included Amadeo Bordiga
, Herman Gorter
, Anton Pannekoek, Otto Rühle
, Karl Korsch
, Sylvia Pankhurst
and Paul Mattick
.
Prominent left communist groups existing today include the International Communist Current
and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party
. Also, different factions from the old Bordigist International Communist Party
are considered left communist organizations.
associated with Marxist theorists C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya
, who used the pseudonyms J.R. Johnson and Freddie Forest respectively. They were joined by Grace Lee Boggs
, a Chinese-American woman who was considered the third founder.
period (the name comes from a phrase Rosa Luxemburg
used in a 1916 essay, 'The Junius Pamphlet'). It existed from 1948 until 1965. The animating personality was Cornelius Castoriadis
, also known as Pierre Chaulieu or Paul Cardan.
wildcat strikes of May 1968 in France.
With their ideas rooted in Marxism
and the 20th century European artistic avant-garde
s, they advocated experiences of life being alternative to those admitted by the capitalist order
, for the fulfillment of human primitive desires and the pursuing of a superior passional quality. For this purpose they suggested and experimented with the construction of situations, namely the setting up of environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study for the construction of such situations, like unitary urbanism
and psychogeography
.
They fought against the main obstacle on the fulfillment of such superior passional living, identified by them in advanced capitalism
. Their theoretical work peaked on the highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle
by Guy Debord
. Debord argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media
and advertising
have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life. To overthrow such a system, the Situationist International supported the May '68 revolts, and asked the workers to occupy the factories
and to run them with direct democracy
, through workers' councils composed by instantly revocable delegates.
After publishing in the last issue of the magazine an analysis of the May 1968 revolts, and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions, the SI was dissolved in 1972.
. It published a magazine of the same name. Solidarity was close to council communism
in its prescriptions and was known for its emphasis on workers' self-organisation and for its radical anti-Leninism
. Solidarity was founded in 1960 by a small group of expelled members of the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League. It was initially known as Socialism Reaffirmed. The group published a journal, Agitator, which after six issues was renamed Solidarity, from which the organisation took its new name. Almost from the start it was strongly influenced by the French Socialisme ou Barbarie
group, in particular by its intellectual leader Cornelius Castoriadis
, whose essays were among the many pamphlets Solidarity produced. Solidarity existed as a nationwide organisation with groups in London
and many other cities until 1981, when it imploded after a series of political disputes. Solidarity the magazine continued to be published by the London group until 1992; other former Solidarity members were behind Wildcat in Manchester
and Here and Now magazine in Glasgow
. The intellectual leader of the group was Chris Pallis, whose pamphlets (written under the name Maurice Brinton
) included Paris May 1968, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control 1917-21 and 'The Irrational in Politics'. Other key Solidarity writers were Andy Anderson (author of Hungary 1956), Ken Weller (who wrote several pamphlets on industrial struggles and oversaw the group's Motor Bulletins on the car industry), Joe Jacobs (Out of the Ghetto), John Quail (The Slow-Burning Fuse), Phil Mailer (Portugal:The Impossible Revolution) John King (The Political Economy of Marx, A History of Marxian Economics), George Williamson (writing as James Finlayson, Urban Devastation - The Planning of Incarceration), [David Lamb] (Mutinies) and Liz Willis (Women in the Spanish Revolution).
. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s
from workerist (operaismo) communism
. Later, post-Marxist
and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s, and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri
, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio
, Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno
, etc.
Through translations made available by Danilo Montaldi and others, the Italian autonomists drew upon previous activist research in the United States by the Johnson-Forest Tendency
and in France by the group Socialisme ou Barbarie
.
It influenced the German and Dutch Autonomen, the worldwide Social Centre movement, and today is influential in Italy, France, and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to post-structuralists
and anarchists. The Autonomist Marxist and Autonomen movements provided inspiration to some on the revolutionary left in English speaking countries, particularly among anarchists, many of whom have adopted autonomist tactics. Some English-speaking anarchists even describe themselves as Autonomists. The Italian operaismo movement also influenced Marxist academics such as Harry Cleaver
, John Holloway
, Steve Wright, and Nick Dyer-Witheford.
of the means of production
, which, in societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production
, are owned by individual capitalists, states
, or other collective bodies. The association of the term communization with a self-identified "ultra-left" was cemented in France in the 1970s, where it came to describe not a transition to a higher phase of communism but a vision of communist revolution itself. The term is still used in this sense in France today and has spread into English usage as a result of the translation of texts by Gilles Dauvé
and Théorie Comuniste, two key figures in this tendency. But in the late 1990s a close but not identical sense of "communization" was developed by the French post-situationist group Tiqqun
. In keeping with their ultra-left predecessors, Tiqqun's predilection for the term seems to be its emphasis on communism as an immediate process rather than a far-off goal, but for Tiqqun it is no longer synonymous with "the revolution" considered as an historical event, but rather becomes identifiable with all sorts of activities – from squatting and setting up communes to simply "sharing" – that would typically be understood as "pre-revolutionary". From an ultra-left perspective such a politics of "dropping-out" or, as Tiqqun put it, "desertion" — setting up spaces and practices that are held to partially autonomous from capitalism — is typically dismissed as either naive or reactionary. Due to the popularity of the Tiqqun-related works Call and The Coming Insurrection
in US anarchist circles it tended to be this latter sense of "communization" that was employed in US anarchist and "insurrectionist" communiques, notably within the Californian student movement of 2009-2010
.
Anti-authoritarian
Anti-authoritarianism is opposition to authoritarianism, which is defined as a "political doctrine advocating the principle of absolute rule: absolutism, autocracy, despotism, dictatorship, totalitarianism." Anti-authoritarians usually believe in full equality before the law and strong civil...
aspects of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism
Left communism
Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International...
, emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism and its derivatives, such as Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
, Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
, and Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
. Libertarian Marxism is also critical of reformist positions, such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse
Grundrisse
The Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie is a lengthy manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx, completed in 1858. However, as it existed primarily as a collection of unedited notes, the work remained unpublished until 1939...
and The Civil War in France
The Civil War in France
The Civil War in France was a pamphlet written by Karl Marx as an official statement of the General Council of the International on the character and significance of the struggle of the Parisian Communards in the French Civil War of 1871....
; emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, Libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...
.
Libertarian Marxism includes such currents as Luxemburgism
Luxemburgism
Luxemburgism is a specific revolutionary theory within Marxism, based on the writings of Rosa Luxemburg. According to M. K...
, council communism
Council communism
Council communism is a current of libertarian Marxism that emerged out of the November Revolution in the 1920s, characterized by its opposition to state capitalism/state socialism as well as its advocacy of workers' councils as the basis for workers' democracy.Originally affiliated with the...
, left communism
Left communism
Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International...
, Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period . It existed from 1948 until 1965...
, the Johnson-Forest tendency
Johnson-Forest Tendency
The Johnson–Forest tendency, sometimes called the Johnsonites, refers to a radical left tendency in the United States associated with Marxist theorists C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, who used the pseudonyms J.R. Johnson and Freddie Forest respectively...
, world socialism, Lettrism
Lettrism
Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and...
/Situationism and operaismo/autonomism
Autonomism
Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist communism...
, and New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
. Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists
Social anarchism
Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...
. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Anton Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya
Raya Dunayevskaya
Raya Dunayevskaya was the founder of the philosophy of Marxist Humanism in the United States of America. At one time Leon Trotsky's secretary, she later split with him and ultimately founded the organization News and Letters Committees and was its leader until her death.-Biography:Of Jewish...
, CLR James, Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist sociologist and political philosopher.Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university...
, Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.-Early life in Athens:...
, Maurice Brinton
Maurice Brinton
Maurice Brinton was the pen name under which Christopher Agamemnon Pallis wrote and translated for the British libertarian socialist group Solidarity from 1960 until the early 1980s....
, Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
, Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin was a French libertarian and author, best known for his work Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, as well as his collection No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism in which he collected writings on the idea and movement it inspired, from the first writings of Max Stirner in the...
, Ernesto Screpanti
Ernesto Screpanti
Ernesto Screpanti is a professor of Political Economy at the University of Siena. He worked on the “rethinking Marxism” research programme, in the attempt to update Marxist analysis by bring it in line with the reality of contemporary capitalism, on the one hand, and to liberate Marxism from any...
and Raoul Vaneigem
Raoul Vaneigem
Raoul Vaneigem is a Belgian writer and philosopher. He was born in Lessines . After studying romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956, he participated in the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970...
.
Council and left communism
Council communism was a radical left-wingLeft-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
movement originating in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany
Communist Workers Party of Germany
The Communist Workers Party of Germany was an anti-parliamentarian and council communist party that was active in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. It was founded in April 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Communist Party of Germany...
(KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, and also within libertarian socialism. The central argument of council communism, in contrast to those of Social democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
and Leninist
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, is that workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural and legitimate form of working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
organisation and government power. This view is opposed to the reformist and Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
stress on vanguard parties
Vanguard party
A vanguard party is a political party at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. The idea of a vanguard party has its origins in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
, parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
s, or the state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
.
The core principle of council communism is that the state and the economy should be managed by workers' councils, composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run "bureaucratic socialism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
. Council communists support a workers' democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils.
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
word for council is "soviet
Soviet (council)
Soviet was a name used for several Russian political organizations. Examples include the Czar's Council of Ministers, which was called the “Soviet of Ministers”; a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia; and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union....
", and during the early years of the revolution worker's councils were politically significant in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. It was to take advantage of the aura
Aura (paranormal)
In parapsychology and many forms of spiritual practice, an aura is a field of subtle, luminous radiation surrounding a person or object . The depiction of such an aura often connotes a person of particular power or holiness. Sometimes, however, it is said that all living things and all objects...
of workplace power that the word became used by Lenin for various political organs. Indeed, the name "Supreme Soviet
Supreme Soviet
The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was the Supreme Soviet in the Soviet Union and the only one with the power to pass constitutional amendments...
", by which the parliament was called; and that of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
itself make use of this terminology, but they do not imply any decentralization
Decentralization
__FORCETOC__Decentralization or decentralisation is the process of dispersing decision-making governance closer to the people and/or citizens. It includes the dispersal of administration or governance in sectors or areas like engineering, management science, political science, political economy,...
.
Furthermore, council communists held a critique of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
as a capitalist state, believing that the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
revolution in Russia became a "bourgeois revolution" when a party bureaucracy replaced the old feudal aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
. Although most felt the Russian Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
was working class in character, they believed that, since capitalist relations still existed (because the workers had no say in running the economy), the Soviet Union ended up as a state capitalist country, with the state replacing the individual capitalist. Thus, council communists support workers' revolutions, but oppose one-party dictatorships.
Council communists also believed in diminishing the role of the party to one of agitation
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
and propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, rejected all participation in elections or parliament, and argued that workers should leave the reactionary trade unions and form one big revolutionary union.
Left communism' is the range of communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and proletarian
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
than the views of Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
held by the Communist International after its first and during its second congress.
Left Communists see themselves to the left of Leninists
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
(whom they tend to see as 'left of capital', not socialists), Anarchists
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
(some of whom they consider internationalist socialists) as well as some other revolutionary socialist tendencies (for example De Leonists
De Leonism
De Leonism, occasionally known as Marxism-Deleonism, is a form of syndicalist Marxism developed by Daniel De Leon. De Leon was an early leader of the first United States socialist political party, the Socialist Labor Party of America....
, who they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances).
Although she lived before left communism became a distinct tendency, Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
has heavily influenced most left communists, both politically and theoretically. Proponents of left communism have included Amadeo Bordiga
Amadeo Bordiga
Amadeo Bordiga was an Italian Marxist, a contributor to Communist theory, the founder of the Communist Party of Italy, a leader of the Communist International and, after World War II, leading figure of the International Communist Party.- Early life :Bordiga was born at Resina, in the province of...
, Herman Gorter
Herman Gorter
Herman Gorter was a Dutch poet and socialist. He was a leading member of the Tachtigers, a highly influential group of Dutch writers who worked together in Amsterdam in the 1880s, centered around De Nieuwe Gids .Gorter's first book, a 4,000 verse epic poem called "Mei" , sealed his reputation...
, Anton Pannekoek, Otto Rühle
Otto Rühle
Otto Rühle was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars, and a founder with along with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others of the group and magazine Internationale, which posed a revolutionary internationalism against a world of warring...
, Karl Korsch
Karl Korsch
-Biography:Korsch was born in Tostedt, near Hamburg, to Carl August Korsch, a secretary at the cantonal court and his wife Therese. In 1898 the family moved to Meiningen, Thuringia and Korsch senior attained the position of a managing clerk in a bank...
, Sylvia Pankhurst
Sylvia Pankhurst
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst was an English campaigner for the suffragist movement in the United Kingdom. She was for a time a prominent left communist who then devoted herself to the cause of anti-fascism.-Early life:...
and Paul Mattick
Paul Mattick
Paul Mattick Sr. was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions...
.
Prominent left communist groups existing today include the International Communist Current
International Communist Current
The International Communist Current is an international centralised left communist organisation which was formed in 1975 and which has sections in France, Great Britain, Mexico, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Venezuela, Brazil, Sweden, India, Italy, USA, Switzerland, Philippines and...
and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party
International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party
The Internationalist Communist Tendency is a political international whose member organisations identify with the Italian left communist tradition...
. Also, different factions from the old Bordigist International Communist Party
International Communist Party
The International Communist Party is a left communist international political party which is often described by outside observers as Bordigist, due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga...
are considered left communist organizations.
Johnson-Forest tendency
The Johnson-Forest tendency, sometimes called the Johnsonites, refers to a radical left tendency in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
associated with Marxist theorists C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya
Raya Dunayevskaya
Raya Dunayevskaya was the founder of the philosophy of Marxist Humanism in the United States of America. At one time Leon Trotsky's secretary, she later split with him and ultimately founded the organization News and Letters Committees and was its leader until her death.-Biography:Of Jewish...
, who used the pseudonyms J.R. Johnson and Freddie Forest respectively. They were joined by Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs is an author, lifelong social activist and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. She eventually went off in her own political direction in the 1960s with her husband of some forty years, James...
, a Chinese-American woman who was considered the third founder.
Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism) was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
period (the name comes from a phrase Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
used in a 1916 essay, 'The Junius Pamphlet'). It existed from 1948 until 1965. The animating personality was Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.-Early life in Athens:...
, also known as Pierre Chaulieu or Paul Cardan.
Situationist International
The Situationist International was a restricted group of international revolutionaries founded in 1957, and which had its peak in its influence on the unprecedented generalGeneral strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
wildcat strikes of May 1968 in France.
With their ideas rooted in Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and the 20th century European artistic avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
s, they advocated experiences of life being alternative to those admitted by the capitalist order
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, for the fulfillment of human primitive desires and the pursuing of a superior passional quality. For this purpose they suggested and experimented with the construction of situations, namely the setting up of environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study for the construction of such situations, like unitary urbanism
Unitary Urbanism
Unitary urbanism was the critique of status quo urbanism employed by the Lettrist International and then further developed by the Situationist International between approximately 1953 and 1960....
and psychogeography
Psychogeography
Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Another definition is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for...
.
They fought against the main obstacle on the fulfillment of such superior passional living, identified by them in advanced capitalism
Advanced capitalism
In political philosophy, advanced capitalism is the situation that pertains in a society in which the capitalist model has been integrated and developed deeply and extensively and for a prolonged period of time...
. Their theoretical work peaked on the highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle is a work of philosophy and critical theory by Guy Debord. It was first published in 1967 in France.-Book structure:...
by Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
. Debord argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
and advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life. To overthrow such a system, the Situationist International supported the May '68 revolts, and asked the workers to occupy the factories
Council for Maintaining the Occupations
The Council for Maintaining the Occupations , or CMDO, was a revolutionary committee formed during the May 1968 events in France originating in the Sorbonne. The council favored the continuation of wildcat general strikes and factory occupations across France, maintaining them through directly...
and to run them with direct democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
, through workers' councils composed by instantly revocable delegates.
After publishing in the last issue of the magazine an analysis of the May 1968 revolts, and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions, the SI was dissolved in 1972.
Solidarity
Solidarity was a small libertarian socialist organisation from 1960 to 1992 in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. It published a magazine of the same name. Solidarity was close to council communism
Council communism
Council communism is a current of libertarian Marxism that emerged out of the November Revolution in the 1920s, characterized by its opposition to state capitalism/state socialism as well as its advocacy of workers' councils as the basis for workers' democracy.Originally affiliated with the...
in its prescriptions and was known for its emphasis on workers' self-organisation and for its radical anti-Leninism
Anti-Leninism
Anti-Leninism is the opposition to thought known as Leninism or Bolshevism.-Opposition from Marxists:Opposition to Leninism can be traced back to the split in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party into the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP...
. Solidarity was founded in 1960 by a small group of expelled members of the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League. It was initially known as Socialism Reaffirmed. The group published a journal, Agitator, which after six issues was renamed Solidarity, from which the organisation took its new name. Almost from the start it was strongly influenced by the French Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period . It existed from 1948 until 1965...
group, in particular by its intellectual leader Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.-Early life in Athens:...
, whose essays were among the many pamphlets Solidarity produced. Solidarity existed as a nationwide organisation with groups in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and many other cities until 1981, when it imploded after a series of political disputes. Solidarity the magazine continued to be published by the London group until 1992; other former Solidarity members were behind Wildcat in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
and Here and Now magazine in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
. The intellectual leader of the group was Chris Pallis, whose pamphlets (written under the name Maurice Brinton
Maurice Brinton
Maurice Brinton was the pen name under which Christopher Agamemnon Pallis wrote and translated for the British libertarian socialist group Solidarity from 1960 until the early 1980s....
) included Paris May 1968, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control 1917-21 and 'The Irrational in Politics'. Other key Solidarity writers were Andy Anderson (author of Hungary 1956), Ken Weller (who wrote several pamphlets on industrial struggles and oversaw the group's Motor Bulletins on the car industry), Joe Jacobs (Out of the Ghetto), John Quail (The Slow-Burning Fuse), Phil Mailer (Portugal:The Impossible Revolution) John King (The Political Economy of Marx, A History of Marxian Economics), George Williamson (writing as James Finlayson, Urban Devastation - The Planning of Incarceration), [David Lamb] (Mutinies) and Liz Willis (Women in the Spanish Revolution).
Autonomism
Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movementSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s
History of Italy as a Republic
After World War II and the overthrow of Mussolini's fascist regime, Italy's history was dominated by the Christian Democracy political party for 50 years, while the opposition was led by the Italian Communist Party ; this situation prevailed until the crisis of the Soviet Union and the...
from workerist (operaismo) communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. Later, post-Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s, and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist sociologist and political philosopher.Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university...
, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio
Potere Operaio
Potere Operaio was a radical left-wing Italian political group, active between 1968 and 1973. Among the group's leaders were Antonio Negri, Franco Piperno, Oreste Scalzone and Valerio Morucci, who led its clandestine...
, Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno
Paolo Virno
-In Castilian:* * * * * * * * * * * -Other languages:* * * * *...
, etc.
Through translations made available by Danilo Montaldi and others, the Italian autonomists drew upon previous activist research in the United States by the Johnson-Forest Tendency
Johnson-Forest Tendency
The Johnson–Forest tendency, sometimes called the Johnsonites, refers to a radical left tendency in the United States associated with Marxist theorists C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, who used the pseudonyms J.R. Johnson and Freddie Forest respectively...
and in France by the group Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period . It existed from 1948 until 1965...
.
It influenced the German and Dutch Autonomen, the worldwide Social Centre movement, and today is influential in Italy, France, and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to post-structuralists
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
and anarchists. The Autonomist Marxist and Autonomen movements provided inspiration to some on the revolutionary left in English speaking countries, particularly among anarchists, many of whom have adopted autonomist tactics. Some English-speaking anarchists even describe themselves as Autonomists. The Italian operaismo movement also influenced Marxist academics such as Harry Cleaver
Harry Cleaver
Harry Cleaver is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, where Cleaver teaches Marxism and Marxist economics. He is best known as the author of Reading Capital Politically, an autonomist reading of Karl Marx's Capital. Dr...
, John Holloway
John Holloway (economist)
John Holloway is a lawyer, Marxist-oriented sociologist and philosopher, whose work is closely associated with the Zapatista movement in Mexico, his home since 1991. It has also been taken up by some intellectuals associated with the piqueteros in Argentina; Abahlali baseMjondolo movement in South...
, Steve Wright, and Nick Dyer-Witheford.
Communization
In communist political theory, communization ("communisation" in British English) is the process of abolishing ownershipOwnership
Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property, which may be an object, land/real estate or intellectual property. Ownership involves multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different parties. The concept of ownership has...
of the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
, which, in societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production
Mode of production
In the writings of Karl Marx and the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production is a specific combination of:...
, are owned by individual capitalists, states
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
, or other collective bodies. The association of the term communization with a self-identified "ultra-left" was cemented in France in the 1970s, where it came to describe not a transition to a higher phase of communism but a vision of communist revolution itself. The term is still used in this sense in France today and has spread into English usage as a result of the translation of texts by Gilles Dauvé
Gilles Dauvé
Gilles Dauvé is a French political theorist associated with left communism.In collaboration with other left communists such as François Martin and Karl Nesic, Dauvé has attempted to fuse, critique, and develop different left communist currents, most notably the Italian movement associated with...
and Théorie Comuniste, two key figures in this tendency. But in the late 1990s a close but not identical sense of "communization" was developed by the French post-situationist group Tiqqun
Tiqqun
Tiqqun is the name of a French philosophical journal, founded in 1999 with an aim to "recreate the conditions of another community." It was created by various writers, before dissolving in Venice in 2001 following the attacks of September 11, 2001...
. In keeping with their ultra-left predecessors, Tiqqun's predilection for the term seems to be its emphasis on communism as an immediate process rather than a far-off goal, but for Tiqqun it is no longer synonymous with "the revolution" considered as an historical event, but rather becomes identifiable with all sorts of activities – from squatting and setting up communes to simply "sharing" – that would typically be understood as "pre-revolutionary". From an ultra-left perspective such a politics of "dropping-out" or, as Tiqqun put it, "desertion" — setting up spaces and practices that are held to partially autonomous from capitalism — is typically dismissed as either naive or reactionary. Due to the popularity of the Tiqqun-related works Call and The Coming Insurrection
The Coming Insurrection
The Coming Insurrection is a French work that hypothesizes the "imminent collapse of capitalist culture"...
in US anarchist circles it tended to be this latter sense of "communization" that was employed in US anarchist and "insurrectionist" communiques, notably within the Californian student movement of 2009-2010
2009 California college tuition hike protests
The 2009 California university college tuition hike protests were a series of protests held on college campuses in the University of California system and elsewhere in California in September through December 2009. Protests were mostly made up of students, although faculty, school employees, and...
.