WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #358 - Culture - Reading: The Proletarian Revolution (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Syllepse Editions offers us a monumental memorial by publishing this

retrospective of the journal The Proletarian Revolution. One hundred
years of writings, analyses, feelings, and participation in the labor
movement. Distinguished authors punctuate this work: Ida Mett, Daniel
Guérin, Albert Camus, Anton Ciliga, Marceau Pivert, Boris Souvarine,
Fernand Loriot... and, of course, Pierre Monatte. ---- "The journal that
didn't observe the labor movement but lived it": the phrase is both
beautiful and accurate. From 1925 to 2025, critical perspectives
intersect, hoping to inform the thinking of the labor movement.

"In the current whirlwind, you can't see clearly and find your way." You
need a compass, it's a theory... You want reasons to hope..."

The Proletarian Revolution defined itself in this field of research
aimed at explaining the world it lived through, endured, and traversed.
This book is a compendium, a brief synthesis of a collective approach
that cannot be summarized here without betraying its true meaning. The
first lesson lies in the diverse and pluralistic nature of the authors
participating and acting in the social movement. Today, it would be
described as a critical laboratory of ideas. Founded in 1925, The
Proletarian Revolution is a child of its time, strongly marked by the
Russian Revolution and "communism." A large portion of its writings pose
questions related to this event. The immediate consequences of this
revolution led to the elaboration of other questions, such as
Bolshevization or the relations between parties and unions. The
editorial team at Éditions Syllepse has opted for a thematic approach to
the journal's writings.

After a brief overview of the "origins of La Révolution prolétarienne"
(The Proletarian Revolution), followed by an exposition of the journal's
"spirit," the book focuses on one of the pillars of La Révolution
prolétarienne: attempts at union unification. These three chapters are
essential for addressing the vision that drives the journal. "It seeks
to provide workers with the means to form their own opinions, to form
their own judgments, to freely and voluntarily determine the conditions
for their autonomous action[...]We do not ask the workers who read us to
'believe in us' and follow us. We ask them, today as yesterday, to
'believe in themselves' and to follow the decisions of their own
conscience."

An intellectual cooperative-such is the journal's focus, its shared
perspectives, its multiple questions... its ideological anchoring is to
be situated in the continuity of the First International: the
emancipation of workers will be their own work. Establishing the spirit
and core convictions that drive The Proletarian Revolution, the
editorial team at Éditions Syllepse covers a wide range of themes:
internationalism, secularism, union autonomy, strikes, feminism,
ecology, communism, the war and its aftermath, the history of the labor
movement, and more.

These diverse journeys alongside the greatest names in proletarian
literature represent a major memorial challenge for activists, but also
for the entire labor movement, a memory of revolutionary unionism that
is fundamental in a period of reformism and ideological confusion.

Dominique Sureau (UCL Angers)

Stéphane Julien, Christian Mahieux, The Proletarian Revolution
(1925-2025), "The magazine that didn't observe the labor movement but
lived it," Syllepse, Les Utopiques Collection, January 2025, 280 pages,
EUR18.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-La-Revolution-proletarienne
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