In the post-war period, anarchists had to deal with the hegemony of the
Stalinist parties over the workers' movement, seeing their space forpolitical action reduced to a minimum. ---- In 1945, the Italian
Anarchist Federation (FAI) and the French Anarchist Federation (FA) were
formed, organizations of synthesis in which humanist and classless
positions, on the one hand, and class communist positions, on the other,
were opposed. ---- Young worker militants, both in Italy and in France,
were supporters of this latter tendency. They claimed a revolutionary
and organized anarchism, potentially capable of competing with Stalinism
and reformism for influence among workers, and contested idealistic and
anti-organizational anarchism, which rejected political intervention in
the factory and in the union.
The reference to the history and theory of class anarchism, starting
from Bakunin, and the rediscovery of the Platform of the Anarchist
Communists of 1926, were the basis on which those comrades of ours took
on the task of the ideological and organizational renewal of the
movement. Having encountered resistance from other currents, they gave
life to two new tendency organizations: the Gruppi Anarchici d'Azione
Proletaria (GAAP), born in 1951 from the break with the FAI, and the
Fédération Communiste Libertaire (FCL), born in 1953 from the evolution
of the FA. Pier Carlo Masini and Georges Fontenis, among the main
protagonists of these political experiences, closely intertwined with
each other, offer us a testimony of this in the interviews that follow.
Pier Carlo Masini: the divergences in the FAI and the birth of GAAP
«I personally collaborated with the magazine "Volontà" with[...]an
interpretation of Malatesta entitled Malatesta vivo . I must say that
this last work was clearly in contrast with the direction of the
magazine and with the thinking of its editors.
They had published a collection of Malatesta's writings in the editions
of "Volontà" that valorized Malatesta the moralist and humanist more
than Malatesta the revolutionary agitator and organizer, who for me in
those years was much more important and above all more real. This was
the first crisis in our relationship that would lead to an open polemic
at the FAI Congress in Livorno in 1949.
The editorial of the magazine[entitled]"Antipolitica" published on April
15 of that year was the fuse that lit the fuse, causing the conflict
between two opposing ways of conceiving anarchism to explode. On the one
hand, an anarchism that was wary of any form of permanent organization
and programmatic political commitment, much more attentive, with
innovative ideas, to marginal issues such as birth control, pedagogical
experiences, and social reforms; on the other, people like me who worked
for a renewal of traditional anarchism. We cared a lot about the
political commitment of anarchism, proposals, programs[...]. The
antipolitical anarchism proposed by "Volontà" appeared to us young
people as a faded flag, by disarmed prophets, a negative anarchism, to
which we opposed an organized movement, committed to propaganda and
proselytism, present in the factory and in the unions» (1).
«I was and still am a convinced organizer, in the sense that the
movement must be defined in its contours, defined ideologically, by a
programmatic basis, which unites the adherents to this charter of
principles, call it what you want, program, in which everyone is
convinced that this program, to be updated from time to time, is what
unites this group. This group has defined contours, whoever is in is in,
whoever is out is out, there is no freedom of access in the sense of
"I'll take a little tour of the anarchist movement and then I'll
leave".[...]I have had bitter experiences and therefore a certain
defense is needed. Also from the entry of anomalous elements, in the
sense that, rejected by all the parties for their spirit of instinctive
irregulars, they find the open doors of anarchism and slip in. They find
welcome, human sympathy, etc. Some become good comrades, good militants,
others are elements of disruption, of discord, of continuous brawling
within the movement.[...]
The Italian anarchist movement was for half a spontaneous movement born
from the territory, from the environment, from the political
circumstances of the Italian tradition, and for the other half it was a
projection of the American comrades and above all of[their]powerful, I
don't know if I should call it an organization, association in fact and
in law. An association based on the charismatic power of the editors of
"L'Adunata dei Refrattari" who through picnics and other types of
meetings, collected funds throughout the United States, from Italian
immigrants of libertarian spirit. Because there has never been an
organized movement there, at most, at the level of a group, of a
nucleus, but even that was little.[...]
This American movement, with its own characteristics, has always had the
aim of influencing the Italian movement inspired by
" Galleanist".[...]It is one of the many currents that populate the
anarchist world and if it is spiritual, ideological, intellectual
influence: it is fine. But if you send trustees to the Italian movement
to delegate and try to direct the anarchist movement in an underground,
non-visible, non-transparent way, having a monopoly on funds, contacts
that are more important than funds, etc.: then this is worse than the
overt organization. Because it is the sectarian, conventicular
organization that is good for the Freemasons[...].
At a certain point, however, dissent arose and they unleashed the
campaign against me.[In 1951]the GAAP, Gruppo anarchici di azione
proletaria (Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action) were formed – an
organisation in its own right – which in my view of things, could
coexist.[...]For example, we paid more attention to trade union
activity, it was enough that they let us work since there was no one
else.[...]Instead, they got it into their heads to expel me[from the
FAI].[...]So expelling us, considering us outcasts, heretics: this was
what the Americans thought, who were afraid of communism, of Marxism
while we had something of Gramsci's culture. We had discovered
consonances with some of the
our positions, because there were some usable elements in Gramscism
(even if not all of them, others are incompatible). We had become the
most intransigent, the hardest" (2).
Georges Fontenis: The Divergences in the FA and the Birth of the FCL
«When the libertarian movement met at the October 1945 congress in
Paris, we chose to call ourselves the Fédération Anarchiste (FA), but it
was really a federation that tried to unite people who were too
different from each other, it was precisely the "synthesis". There were
those we called "the charlatans", there were the anti-religious who
engaged in activities against religion, there were some trade unionists,
there were the literary people, the half-philosophers like
Charles-Auguste Bontemps... There were basically two currents. On the
one hand, those we could call the "intellectuals" and on the other, the
young people and the workers.
It was among these that one could glimpse the mentality that
corresponded roughly to the Platform, which was close to the memories,
still alive among the older ones, of the struggles of the 1920s around
the Platform. Let us not forget that the Union Anarchiste (UA) before
the war was strongly influenced by the Platform, especially between 1927
and 1930[...].
Thus, the coexistence of these two tendencies became impossible. Those
in Bordeaux, for example, were only interested in anticlericalism, and
when anything else was discussed they simply disappeared. They organized
conference tours that had no
no specific anarchist content, just anti-religious and free-thinking
talk. I'm not saying that all this was wrong or useless, but that it
wasn't enough. I remember some socialist militants in my neighborhood
telling me, "You're bogged down in the swampy waters of your
preachers!", and I didn't know what to say. They were mostly right.
From the beginning there was a false union between two currents that
were very different. On the one hand, people like Aristide Lapeyre and
his friends who were content to make the apologia of wild anarchism and
on the other all the young people who were restless with anger and
demands. There were meetings where we confronted each other. I remember
one at 10 Rue de Lancry in Paris, where Aristide Lapeyre spoke at length
about the freedom of Man, with a capital "M", when Nédélec, a Renault
worker of the revolutionary current, began to attack him without
hesitation: "Things are not like that, at Renault. There we have to
fight, struggle", he said. To which Lapeyre replied: "But comrade, we
can all see that you are young and impatient, but we are the only ones
who are right, while you are throwing yourself into adventure", and so
on. Poor Nédélec, he was left without an answer and left. And I wanted
to leave too.
We were in the same organization, but in reality we were two
organizations: the platformists and the humanists, to simplify a bit.
Soon the situation of opposition worsened.[...]Eventually we reached a
situation in which the humanists admitted the possibility of being able
to form internal currents. And they made their own current, although
they never talked about it. They always talked about our current,
the platformist tendency Organization-Pensée-Bataille (OPB), but they
never spoke of their current organized in the Commission d'Études
Anarchistes (CEA).
In fact there were two tendencies, two ways of writing, two ways of
acting, two ways of doing activities. Things went on like this until the
next congress with increasing and violent clashes. We got to the point
of telling each other things very clearly, as is done in the family, and
the FA entered a phase of survival. Until the Bordeaux congress in May
1952, when someone walked out. The first to leave were those we called
"charlatans".
At the Paris congress in May 1953 there was a split[from which the FCL
was born], because our platformist comrades from the groups of
Paris-Nord, Aulnay-sous-Bois and others presented revolutionary
documents that the synthesists did not accept. So we asked them: "Do you
accept them, yes or no? We are the majority
gioranza, yes or no?", and they walked out. Because it wasn't really a
split. It was called a split for convenience, but what happened was that
the purists and the synthesists went away and left us alone.
For our part, we had the most active groups, at Renault and Thomson, for
example, or those in the working-class neighborhoods and suburbs of
Paris, at Aulnay-sous-Bois, Bondy, Paris-Nord, Paris-Est. Some members
of these last two groups were certainly platformists, even if the term
was not used much at the time. We also had active comrades in the
provinces, where some had heard of the Platform and had contacted us.
However, despite the split
with the humanists, the FCL remained a strong organization compared to
the FA, and new groups also arrived.[...]
As for the purists, they formed their[new]anarchist federation in 1953
but they had nothing in common with each other. Maurice Joyeux had
nothing in common with someone like Aristide Lapeyre, for
example.[...]Among the purists of the FA there were mainly small
traders, street vendors, small artisans.[...]For them the proletariat
had no meaning, what was important was "Man". "Man" with a capital "M":
"Man must be free", and so on. Instead, those who stayed in the FCL were
workers, young people and students» (3).
Notes:
(1) Taken from the interview with Pier Carlo Masini edited by Lorenzo
Pezzica, in "Volontà", special issue Fifty Years of Volontà. Indices
1946-1996 , 1997.
(2) Taken from the interview with Pier Carlo Masini edited by Alberto
Ciampi, in "Bergomum", year XCVI, n. 3, 2001.
(3) Excerpt from the interview with Georges Fontenis by José Antonio
Gutiérrez, Reignac-sur-Indre, 19 February 2005,
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/17353.
Bio-bibliographical information:
On Masini see Maurizio Antonioli et al. (dir.), Biographical Dictionary
of Italian Anarchists , vol. II, BFS, Pisa, 2004.
On Fontenis v. Marianne Enckell et al. (dir.), Les anarchistes.
Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement libertaire francophone , Éditions
de l'Atelier, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2015.
In the pictures:
F1. IV National Convention of the FAI (Canosa di Puglia, 22-24 February
1948). On the right Pier Carlo Masini, on the left Cesare Zaccaria of
the "Volontà" group (Masini Family Archive, Cerbaia Val di Pesa);
F2. News of the National Anarchist Conference "For an oriented and
federated movement" (Genoa-Pontedecimo, 24-25 February 1951) in which
the GAAP were formed ("L'Impulso", year II, no. 11-12, November-December
1950);
F3. News of the VIII National Congress of the FA (Paris, 23-25 May 1953)
in which the FCL was established ("Le Libertaire", year LVI, no. 362, 28
May 1953);
F4. Paris, mid-1950s. Georges Fontenis, center in profile, with other
militants of the FCL (Fonds d'Archives Communistes Libertaires, Montreuil).
The following AL/FdCA publications are available on this topic:
Guido Barroero (edited by), The Sons of the Workshop. The Anarchist
Groups of Proletarian Action (1949-1957) , Franco Salomone Documentation
Centre, Fano, 2013.
Nestor McNab (ed.), The Anarchist Communists' Organizational Platform:
Origin, Debate, and Meaning , La Giovane Talpa, Cernusco sul Naviglio, 2007.
Nestor McNab (ed.), Manifesto of Libertarian Communism: Georges Fontenis
and the French Anarchist Movement , Franco Salomone Documentation
Center, Fano, 2011.
Request from: ilcantiere@autistici.org.
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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