From the ideological struggle within the French Fédération Anarchiste,
the Fédération Communiste Libertaire was born in 1953. The VIII Congressof the FA, held in May in Paris, had approved the theses of the
Manifeste du communisme libertaire drafted by Georges Fontenis and a
referendum among the militants, in December, had sanctioned the new
name. The conflict between humanist and idealist anarchism, which
supported the synthesis between the different currents of the movement,
and class-based communist anarchism, founded on ideological and
organizational unity, had finally been resolved in favor of the latter.
Guy Bourgeois, one of the protagonists of this political journey,
recounts its events in the short essay that we propose here, taken from
the preface to the second edition of Fontenis' fundamental theoretical text.
We were emerging from the war and the Nazi occupation and were radically
questioning bourgeois society and its principles. In this quest of ours,
we felt the need for action and brotherhood, and we were largely
suffering from the syndrome of militancy, after the clandestine struggle
in the Resistance had disappointed our young hopes.
Our meeting place was a small place on the Quay de Valmy, along the
Canal Saint-Martin, which had the right characteristics to satisfy our
romanticism... It was the headquarters of the «Libertaire», which we
defined without hesitation as «the only revolutionary newspaper».
That era was the scene of an incredible ferment of ideas. Existentialism
was raging in the media and the last survivors of the surrealism of the
1920s had discovered anarchy («which carries the torch high»). Every
week they published a column in the «Libertaire» and Georges Fontenis
had been quoted in a poem by Breton. [...]
We saw anarchy as the only coherent solution. We deluded ourselves that
the Fédération Anarchiste was the true revolutionary force. And we
joined it naturally. The F.A. claimed to have anarcho-syndicalists,
libertarian communists and Stirnerian individualists coexist within it.
This led to conflicts of all kinds. We listened to the Spanish
libertarians, who idealized their Revolution. We were very sure of
ourselves. In front of the Stalinists we claimed our "model" of society.
Without taking into account the diversity of the context, many of us
wanted to apply the principles of anarcho-syndicalism in France. The
only anarchist texts that could be found with a certain ease, outside of
the testimonies of the Spanish war, in which no one had made a serious
self-criticism, were those of Sébastien Faure, apostle of the synthesis
between the different libertarian tendencies. We soon realized that
synthesistism resolved itself into a compromise, into accommodation,
into mediation, revealing itself to be a reformist conception. There
were even anarchists who attributed to the movement a useful role within
bourgeois democracy (like Bontemps).
When we discussed with Marxists we were considered dreamers and naïve,
and sometimes we were forced to defend the ravings of the «Libertaire»
born from synthesistism (as in the case of a campaign in favor of
Céline, on trial for collaborationism). Our words were perceived as
those beautiful stories that are told after dinner.
Eventually we found other texts by rummaging in libraries, or by taking
them from older comrades, and we demonstrated that the
anti-authoritarian current had produced an important theoretical
elaboration: this was our revelation. It must be noted that in the
bookstores there was not even the shadow of the works of Bakunin,
Guillaume, Malatesta etc... while Marxist editions flourished.
It was the libertarian communist current that deserved credit for having
rediscovered the fundamental texts and the class origins of social
anarchism, which the Manifesto of Libertarian Communism forcefully
reaffirms.
We were also surprised to discover that materialist analysis as
conceived by Marxists did not constitute an element of divergence for
the libertarian current of the First International, and we realized that
the boundary between Marxism and anarchism had never been too clear.
We began to raise the question of revolutionary organization and its
role, and we sought our roots in Bakunin's Alliance and Archinov's
Platform. Our research, discoveries and reflections were published in a
column in the «Libertaire» entitled Problèmes essentiels and in the
magazine «Études Anarchistes». The Manifesto, written by Georges
Fontenis, takes up much of it.
Towards the "humanist" anarchists, whom we called "softies", we had a
desire to challenge. The Manifesto uses the forbidden vocabulary used by
Marxists: party, political line, discipline.We had used the term
"dictatorship of the proletariat" in the title of a paragraph, even
though we later denied that principle in the text. We fearlessly
affirmed that the other tendencies had only a vague connection with
anarchism and that only our current was its authentic expression. Later
we would realize that trying to rehabilitate a word like "anarchy,"
which had become so ambiguous, was an impossible gamble.
The other tendencies of the F.A. resented the strength of our
initiative. Very soon they wondered if we were not infiltrated Bolshevik
agents: they whispered it, they said it and a few years later they even
wrote it. On the other hand, the Manifesto contested the fact that
Proudhon was an anarchist.
With the other tendencies eliminated, the F.A. became a cohesive and
coherent organization: the Fédération Communiste Libertaire. In the
meantime, another synthesist F.A. was formed [...]. But there was a much
more important problem to resolve than the conflicts between the
anarchist currents, which only interested us: in the post-war workers'
movement the Communist Party objectively, truly represented the working
class. And it truly considered it its vanguard, in the Leninist sense of
the term. [...] The Manifesto of Libertarian Communism first of all
posed the problem of building another political vanguard. Archinov's
Platform outlined an approach towards the masses completely opposed to
the Leninist principle of "direction external to the class". We have
always tried to be consistent with that approach. We found in Archinov
the necessary principle of ideological unity. Overcoming the confusion
of the F.A., the Manifesto took it up again with conviction. [...]
The initiative of the Manifesto was important. Perhaps it may have
seemed like a gamble, like every militant project that calls certainties
into question. Of course it has paid for weaknesses and errors, which
are easier to notice in hindsight than in the heat of action. [...] In
any case, the Manifesto of Libertarian Communism was necessary. It
marked for the first time in the post-war libertarian movement a clear
break with the attitude of compromise of humanist anarchism. It
prefigured, ahead of its time, the first anti-reformist movement based
on self-management. After its publication, nothing was the same. [...]
Nothing would have been possible without the necessary break in the F.A.
in 1953, of which Georges Fontenis was the main architect.
Taken from Guy Bourgeois, Preface a la réédition, in Georges Fontenis,
Manifeste du communisme libertaire. Réédition commentée, Éditions L,
Paris, 1985 (original ed. Éditions Le Libertaire, Paris, 1953). Italian
translation by the editor.
Guy Bourgeois (Mâcon, Saône-et-Loire, 1927-2004), active in the
Resistance, militant of the FA and the FCL, left it in 1956 with the
Mâcon group and others who disagreed with the «dirigiste» line of
Fontenis and with the choice to participate in the legislative
elections. Committed to solidarity with the movement for the
independence of Algeria, founder of the Groupes Anarchistes d'Action
Révolutionnaire (1956-1960), of the Union des Groupes Anarchistes
Communistes (1961-1968) and of the Tendance Anarchiste Communiste
(1969-1987), he collaborated with the periodicals «Le Libertaire», «Noir
et Rouge» and «Tribune Anarchiste Communiste». See Marianne Enckell et
al. (ed.), Les anarchistes. Biographical Dictionary of the Francophone
Libertarian Movement, Éditions de l'Atelier, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2015.
On this topic, the following publications by AL/FdCA are available:
Nestor McNab (ed.), The Organizational Platform of Anarchist Communists.
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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