Libertarian socialism: politics in black and red

324 Pages·2017·1.069 MB·English

by  Berry, David;Kinna, Ruth;Pinta, Saku;Prichard, Alex

Libertarian Socialism
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Libertarian Socialism
Politics in Black and Red
Editedby
Alex Prichard
LecturerinInternationalRelations,DepartmentofPolitics,UniversityofExeter,UK
Ruth Kinna
ProfessorofPoliticalTheory,DepartmentofPolitics,HistoryandIR,
LoughboroughUniversity,UK
Saku Pinta
IndependentScholar
David Berry
SeniorLecturerinHistory,DepartmentofPolitics,HistoryandIR,
LoughboroughUniversity,UK
©AlexPrichard,RuthKinna,SakuPintaandDavidBerry2012
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
NotesonContributors viii
1 Introduction 1
RuthKinnaandAlexPrichard
2 FreedomandDemocracy:Marxism,Anarchismandthe
ProblemofHumanNature 17
PaulBlackledge
3 Anarchism,IndividualismandCommunism:WilliamMorris’s
CritiqueofAnarcho-communism 35
RuthKinna
4 TheSyndicalistChallengeintheDurhamCoalfieldbefore
1914 57
LewisH.Mates
5 GeorgesSorel’sAnarcho-Marxism 78
RenzoLlorente
6 AntonioGramsci,Anarchism,SyndicalismandSovversivismo 96
CarlLevy
7 CouncilCommunistPerspectivesontheSpanishCivilWar
andRevolution,1936–1939 116
SakuPinta
8 A‘BohemianFreelancer’?C.L.R.James,HisEarlyRelationship
toAnarchismandtheIntellectualOriginsofAutonomism 143
ChristianHøgsbjerg
9 ‘WhiteSkin,BlackMasks’:MarxistandAnti-racistRoots
ofContemporaryUSAnarchism 167
AndrewCornell
10 TheSearchforaLibertarianCommunism:DanielGuérinand
the‘Synthesis’ofMarxismandAnarchism 187
DavidBerry
v
vi Contents
11 SocialismeouBarbarieorthePartialEncountersbetween
CriticalMarxismandLibertarianism 210
BenoîtChalland
12 BeyondBlackandRed:TheSituationistsandtheLegacy
oftheWorkers’Movement 232
Jean-ChristopheAngaut
13 CarnivalandClass:AnarchismandCouncilisminAustralasia
duringthe1970s 251
TobyBoraman
14 SituatingHardtandNegri 275
DavidBates
15 Conclusion:TowardsaLibertarianSocialismfor
theTwenty-FirstCentury? 294
SakuPintaandDavidBerry
Index 304
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our contributors to the volume for their patience
and for responding so positively to editorial requests. The team at Palgrave
has shown similar patience, and we thank them for this and their helpful
advice and encouragement. We would also like to thank all the partici-
pants at the ‘Is Black and Red Dead?’ conference held at the Centre for
the Study of Social and Global Justice, University of Nottingham, UK, in
September 2009, which provided the original inspiration for this collec-
tion.SueSimpsonandTonyBurnsdeserveaspecialmentionfortheirhelp
and support throughout. We would also like to acknowledge the generos-
ityoftheUKPoliticalStudiesAssociation’sMarxistSpecialistGroupandthe
PSA Anarchist Studies Network, who, in supporting this conference, made
it possible for some of the contributors, and many others whose excellent
papers could not be included, to meet and exchange ideas face-to-face in a
convivialenvironment.
vii
Contributors
Jean-Christophe Angaut has been Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the
École Normale Supérieure de Lyon since 2006. His fields of research and
teaching are nineteenth-century philosophy, political philosophy and con-
nections between socialist, communist andanarchist thought.He has pub-
lishedtwobooksontheyoungBakunin’sthought:Bakouninejeunehégélien–
La philosophie et son dehors (2007) and La liberté des peuples – Bakounine
et les révolutions de 1848 (2009). He has also published articles on Marx,
Bakunin, Kropotkin, the Young Hegelian movement and the Situationists.
He is a member of the editorial committee of the French anarchist journal
Réfractions.
DavidBatesisaprincipallecturerandDirectorofPoliticsandInternational
RelationsintheDepartmentofAppliedSocialSciencesatCanterburyChrist
ChurchUniversity,UK.Hisinterestsarefocusedprimarilyintheareaofrad-
ical politics, including anti-capitalist forms of thinking. He has a particular
concern with Marxist and post-Marxist approaches to socialist emanci-
pation. More recently he has been interested in the critical relationship
betweenMarxistandlibertarianradicalpolitics.
David BerryisSeniorLecturerinHistoryatLoughboroughUniversity,UK.
He was awarded his DPhil in French labour history from the University
of Sussex, UK. His research area is the history of the Left and of labour
movements in twentieth-century France. He has worked mostly on the
French anarchist movement and ‘alternative Left’, and is currently work-
ing on the life and ideas of Daniel Guérin (1904–1988) and the libertarian
communist tradition from 1917 to the present. His publications include
A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917–1945 (2009) and (edited
jointlywithConstanceBantman)NewPerspectivesonAnarchism,Labourand
Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational (2010). Hav-
ingbeeninvolvedforsomeyearswiththeJournalofContemporaryEuropean
Studies (formerly the Journal of Area Studies), he is currently an associate
editor and reviews editor of the journal Anarchist Studies. He is a member
of the Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme, Lausanne and
Marseille, of the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary
FranceandoftheAnarchistStudiesNetwork.
Paul Blackledge is Professor of Political Theory and UCU Branch Secre-
tary at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. He is author of Marxism and
viii
NotesonContributors ix
Ethics (2012), Reflections on the Marxist Theory of History (2006) and Perry
Anderson, Marxism and the New Left (2004). He is co-editor of Virtue and
Politics (2011), Alasdair MacIntyre’s Engagement with Marxism (2008), Revolu-
tionary Aristotelianism (2008) and Historical Materialism and Social Evolution
(2002).HehaswrittenonMarxismandanarchisminTheEdinburghCritical
HistoryofNineteenth-CenturyPhilosophy(2011)andinInternationalSocialism.
HeisamemberoftheSocialistWorkersParty.
Toby Boraman is an historian for the Waitangi Tribunal in Wellington,
New Zealand. His research interests are labour history from below, (anti-
state)communismandextra-parliamentaryprotestofthe1960sand1970s.
He received his PhD in 2006 from the University of Otago in Dunedin,
New Zealand, on the subjects of the New Left and anarchism in New
Zealand.Afterwards,hepublishedahistoryofanarchismandanti-Bolshevik
communism in New Zealand from the 1950s to the 1980s called Rabble
Rousers and Merry Pranksters (2007). He has also published a book chapter
and articles on the subjects of the New Left and working-class resis-
tance to neoliberalism, and historical pieces on strikes and near riots in
NewZealand.
BenoîtChallandisavisitingassociateprofessorintheDepartmentofPoli-
ticsoftheNewSchoolforSocialResearchandalecturerattheUniversityof
Bologna,Italy.Heworksinthefieldofpoliticalandhistoricalsociology,with
a particular interest in Arab politics and political theory. His publications
include La Ligue Marxiste Révolutionaire, 1969–1980 (2000) and Palestinian
Civil Society and Foreign Donors (2009). He is co-author, with Chiara Bottici,
ofTheMythoftheClashofCivilizations(2010)andThePoliticsofImagination
(edited2011).
Andrew Cornell is an educator, author and organiser based in Brooklyn,
New York. He holds a PhD in American studies from New York University,
New York, USA, and is completing a study of anarchism in mid-twentieth-
centuryUSA.HeistheauthorofOpposeandPropose!LessonsfromMovement
foraNewSociety.HiswritingappearsinperiodicalssuchastheJournalforthe
Study of Radicalism, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory and Left Turn magazine.
HehasalsocontributedtothecollectionsTheUniversityagainstItself (2008)
andTheHidden1970s:HistoriesofRadicalism(2010).
Christian Høgsbjerg has completed a doctoral thesis on ‘C.L.R. James in
ImperialBritain,1932–38’intheDepartmentofHistoryattheUniversityof
York, UK, and is the editor of a special edition of C.L.R. James’s 1934 play
abouttheHaitianRevolution,ToussaintLouverture:TheStoryoftheOnlySuc-
cessful Slave Revolt inHistory (forthcoming).Heis amember oftheeditorial
boardofthejournalInternationalSocialism.