1We would like to take a look back at an experiment: the "Socialisme ou barbarie" ("SouB") movement which lasted from 1948-1949 to 1967. In remembering this revolutionary group, we thought we might borrow Jean-François Lyotard’s apt expression concerning Pierre Souyri, partisan of a Marxism that "was not academic." [1] Moreover, we should probably speak of "Marxisms," as "SouB"’s approach was far from an unyielding sectarianism: there was room within it for disparate voices and varied readings of Marx that confronted each other. It was not a party, but rather a laboratory where different schools of thought tried their hand at coordinating theory and practice. The group thus participated in the "return of the political question" [2] in its revolutionary form that left its mark on the 1960s and followed the end of the Algerian War. This introduction’s only purpose is to summarize, or serve as a reminder of, the milestones in the life of the group, a few dates and other lines of force in its project.

2This presentation is often supported by analyses taken from the work of Jean-François Lyotard: this is a result of our predilection for his thinking, and an attempt to make up for the absence in this issue of any contribution concerning his itinerary within "SouB." We also regret the absence of any text on Daniel Mothé, but these gaps, we hope, will be compensated by all of the original perspectives offered here. The authors were interested in the specific contributions of some of the protagonists of "SouB" as well as in certain key issues of the movement’s journal, also called Socialisme ou Barbarie, such as the issue covering the Hungarian revolution. They examined the intellectual sources of the movement – what was their relationship to Merleau-Ponty? – as well as its legacy. They looked into the debates that marked its history, the debate between Lefort and Sartre for example, as well as the question of the relevance of the group’s project today. They explored the other theoretical frameworks and practices that seem comparable to "SouB," as well as the kinds of rereadings of Marx that some carry out, or the way the resulting activism is put into practice, etc.

3There are those who have noted the contrast that exists between two aspects of "SouB." On the one hand, there is the current acknowledgment of the movement and its arguments: the spread of these ideas, and the prestige and the "posthumous recognition" that "SouB" enjoys, involving an assimilation or appropriation of its themes (autonomy, the non-socialist character of the USSR, etc.). On the other, Socialisme ou Barbarie languished in relative obscurity at the time it was published: [3] the veterans of the movement have emphasized that despite 40 published issues, the group and its journal remained nearly invisible during their existence. The responsibility for this lay with the censors, as well as the marginalization of leftist criticism of the USSR – whether this criticism was Marxist or anarchist – of criticism of the USSR in general, and of criticism of the Communist parties of Western Europe along with their associated organs and auxiliaries. [4] The recognition of the group after the fact is especially connected with the celebrity of some among them, but also with its reinstantiation as a precursor of the denunciation of communist totalitarianism in the 1970s. This retroactive highlighting modifies and distorts the group’s reality. Nevertheless, in our view, the publicity surrounding "SouB" today did not seem to preclude a reexamination of the group’s concerns. Furthermore, although it is not at all our intent to reduce "SouB" to the views of some of its better-known protagonists (Castoriadis, Lefort, Lyotard, etc.), we note that they are read and studied far less than their widely recognized contemporaries (Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida). So we did not find it pointless to look back here on their roles and their actions within the group.

Some dates [5]

4In 1946 some of the members of the French section of the Fourth International (Trotskyist), including Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, formed a grouping on the basis of a critique of orthodox Trotskyism: this was the "Chaulieu-Montal tendency." With the formation of "SouB," history repeated itself to some degree: just as Trotsky had founded the Fourth International in 1937 to fight against the Stalinist bureaucracy and its criminal policies, a group of militants left it some ten years later, turning part of its own diagnosis against it. This group criticized Trotskyism for its economism, its inability to correctly define the class nature of communist societies, its lack of attention to the specific nature of the struggles in advanced capitalist societies – struggles that foregrounded demands for autonomy – its lack of interest in the organizational creativity of struggling workers, and its inability to produce an analysis of the transformations of capitalism. [6] In short, "SouB" cast doubt on Trotskyism’s ability to carry out either the practical or the theoretical critique of the society of exploitation. [7] The journal’s editorial in its first issue (March-April 1949) underlined Trotskyism’s powerlessness to truly grasp the essence of Stalinism: "The question of the nature of Stalinism is the point where the superficiality of Trotskyist conceptions is most clearly apparent."

5After leaving the Trotskyist organization, Lefort and Castoriadis developed a project for a journal, Socialisme ou Barbarie, whose first issue was published in March 1949. [8] The group that was formed that same year was composed of roughly twenty people and took the journal’s name. At first a bimonthly journal, later quarterly, it ceased publication after its fortieth issue in June 1965. The group then dissolved itself in 1967. The journal published theoretical reflections, but it also gave workers the chance to speak directly for themselves. The first issue contained the first part of a French translation of Paul Romano’s text, "The American Worker"; the journal then published Mothé’s text on his experience as a worker for Renault. It also covered the major political events of the times: the Algerian War, but also Hungary. The December 1956 issue made its mark in this respect, presenting quite original critical analyses on the Hungarian revolution in October in opposition to the analyses of the young communists who defended the Soviet intervention in that country. Claude Lefort attacked the "totalitarianism without Stalin" behind that endorsement. While the mainstays of the group were Castoriadis (under the pseudonyms Chaulieu and Cardan) and Lefort (under the pseudonym Montal) – with Lyotard also playing an important role (under the pseudonym François Laborde), as did Souyri (Pierre Brune) and Daniel Mothé – there were other active or transitory members of "SouB," including Hubert Damisch, Guy Debord, Vincent Descombes, Gérard Genette, Jean Laplanche, Edgar Morin, Benjamin Péret and many others.

6Lefort, who questioned the reconstitution of a revolutionary party within the group, left "SouB" in 1958 and founded the "Informations et Liaisons ouvrières" (ILO) group with Henri Simon. In 1960, this group changed its name to "Informations et correspondances ouvrières." The split was due to "SouB"’s politics and the question of organization. While Lefort and Simon denounced the risk of bureaucratization inherent in any form of organization (which was therefore contrary to the objective of the proletariat’s selforganization in its struggles), Castoriadis and Albert Masó (who used the pseudonym Alberto Véga in "SouB") emphasized the need for a structured organization, one that was democratic and focused on self-organization. Castoriadis would always be sensitive to this need for (non-partisan) organization. It was one of the themes of his text analyzing May 1968, "The Anticipated Revolution": the "need for an organized revolutionary movement." "One cannot overcome bureaucratic organization by refusing all organization." [9] To this was added an opposition between Lefort and Castoriadis on the nature of the post-revolutionary regime and an original analysis by Lefort, marking himself off from the rest of the group, on the last days of the Hungarian insurrection.

7In 1963-1964, there was a second split between a "tendency" led by Castoriadis and Mothé, who retained the name "SouB" as well as the journal, and a heterogeneous grouping that took the name "Pouvoir Ouvrier." This movement, notably including Véga, Philippe Guillaume, Lyotard (who resigned in 1966) and Souyri, published a monthly bulletin, also called Pouvoir Ouvrier: they ceased activity in 1969. The main cause of this second split was a set of arguments put forth for discussion by Castoriadis that refocused the ways of describing the modern world and taking an active role within it. At issue was how to interpret the neutralization of the social and economic effects of revolutionary activity by the workings of modern capitalism. Was this consolidation of capitalism a tendency destined to come up against new contradictions, as Souyri thought? Or would it be necessary, as Castoriadis started to believe, to abandon the economistic contradiction as Marx expressed it in Das Kapital? [10] According to Castoriadis, one had to try and understand the attachment to modern capitalist society. After 1968, he would add: "We must understand what modern capitalism is, and go beyond a moribund traditional Marxism, which continues to dominate the minds of many living beings." [11]

The "SouB" Project

81. This group, defined as an "enterprise of ’revolutionary critique and orientation,’" [12] completely occupied with "combatting exploitation and alienation," [13] had a clear point of departure: there would either be socialism or barbarism. The expression is Rosa Luxemburg’s: this was how she and the Luxemburgists saw the alternative facing humanity. If the action of the masses did not succeed in bringing about socialism in due time, society as a whole would regress to barbarism. [14] As a side note, we should wonder about the exact meaning of this reference to Rosa Luxemburg. And the group’s operative definition of "socialism" also remained to be defined. Initially, it seemed to all that socialism should be considered in terms of an alternative: it could not, therefore, be understood as the result of a functional improvement in the economy or society, or as the fruit of an improvement in living conditions, etc. Whatever capitalism’s development, the alternative would remain unaffected. In this case, socialism seems associated with (or is the name of) the transformation of the organization of labor that is the only way to overcome the exploitation of that labor: "there is no other alternative to exploitation than socialism." [15] But we also find other conceptions within "SouB," even different ones from the same thinkers. The position of that alternative, socialism or barbarism, led to reflection on the redefinition of socialism, a socialism that differed from existing historical forms. Merleau-Ponty had expressed this alternative, this imperative, a few years earlier, in August 1945:

9

If the class struggle once again becomes the motivating force of history and, definitely, if the alternative of socialism or chaos becomes clearer, it is up to us to choose a proletarian socialism – not as a guaranty of happiness, since we do not know whether man can ever be integrated into co-existence or whether each country’s happiness is compossible with that of the others, but as that unknown other future which we must reach, or die. [16]

102. The intellectual orientation seemed to be one of critique, of "the emancipation of the critical capacity," [17] of a critique that spared no one (clinging to principles or dogmas was out of the question), of the acknowledgment that the class perspective should likewise spare no one. The group, as Lyotard put it, elaborated "a class point of view without blinders." [18] In this capacity as critics, they saw an unwavering form of resistance that would remain untouched: "Everything can be coopted – save one thing: our own reflective, critical, autonomous activity," [19] Castoriadis wrote.

113. The group worked on a critique of existing socialist practices and discourses, a critique of the perversion of the organs that the workers’ movement had given itself, and the fact that Marxism had become "the dominant idiom" in Russia and "the genre of discourse of the bureaucracy." [20] The journal’s first issue presented the nature of the "’working-class’ bureaucracy," particularly in its Stalinist form, as "the fundamental problem of our time" [21] for a revolutionary activist. "SouB" raised the question of the social nature of the USSR. They saw themselves as representing the recognition that the Trotskyist critique of the USSR had its limits, and that it needed to be redone from scratch. Castoriadis’s text, "The Relations of Production in Russia," [22] is an example of this. Similarly, Lefort undertook the critique of the notion of the "workers’ state," the Trotskyist idea that the Soviet Union could be analyzed as a workers’ state suffering from a bureaucratic deformation, as a "degenerated workers’ state" (i.e. as the temporary result of the struggle between the forces of the proletarian revolution and those of the counter-revolution). [23] In his view, the USSR was not a workers’ state deformed by a bureaucratic excrescence, but rather a new form of society. Neither was it a regime in decline; on the contrary, all signs were that that state had not only survived the war and was growing stronger, but that its social model was now spreading.

12This called for an examination of the bureaucratic phenomenon. According to "SouB" and unlike what Trotsky thought, the bureaucracy was not merely an epiphenomenon, a parasitic formation to be eliminated, but had become the dominant class in relation to the proletariat. Because of this, the USSR could not be called socialist. [24] Lefort proved that the bureaucracy had political origins, emphasizing the difference between how the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie were formed. [25]

13The theoretical consequences of this analysis of the bureaucracy are considerable, for the definition that Marx had given of the dominant class is changed as a result. That class is not so much identified with the ownership of the means of production as with the management of those means. Moreover, the opposition between owners and proletarians is replaced by the opposition between directors and executants. [26]

144. "SouB"’s activity has sometimes been reduced to a critique of the existing communist regimes, whereas the group also conducted critiques of Western liberal societies, taking as their object the rationalization of capitalism – which no longer seemed destined to collapse – a rationalization also motivated by the economic growth of the 1960s. In addition, unlike many far-left groups, "SouB" became interested in protest movements in developed countries and in the originality of their content. For example, the group paid close attention to what was taking place in the United States, in sharp contrast to the anti-Americanism of some Marxist organizations. The break with the strictly economic and productivist explanations of orthodox Marxism allowed the group to see the class struggle in operation everywhere, and to become aware of all the struggles against domination (an awareness inherited from the anarchists): those of women, students, currently or formerly colonized countries, etc. If students or populations benefiting from technical advances were driving the struggles against domination in place of the proletariat, this required further study. [27]

155. "SouB" saw itself as a revolutionary group. The objective of their theoretical work was therefore to have an impact on the political and social level, in the tradition of Marx. This work has thus been described as "theoretical-practical activity." Collective action by the masses was the only way to overcome the contradictions of the real. The group’s decisions were based on political motives, not intellectual ones: as a group whose self-image was of an organization working toward worldwide proletarian revolution, their goal was the transformation of social relations. Philippe Gottraux has emphasized in this respect that the contemporary reception of "SouB" is biased, as it limits their work to the sphere of intellectual journals, [28] obscuring their criterion of praxis. The aim of "SouB"’s theoretical output, then, was to incite action, a line of intervention. Nevertheless, one must not associate the group with any anti-intellectual tendencies. For them it was not an either/or choice between the intellectual and the political domains: their theoretical work was in no way contingent. Castoriadis often reiterated this, in particular as a warning to the student movement in 1968: "One cannot overcome […] the sclerosis of dead dogmas by condemning true theoretical reflection." [29]

166.There was a form of spontaneism that characterized "SouB," which is why the reference to Rosa Luxemburg was crucial. This "organ of critique and revolutionary orientation" presented itself as an instrument intended for "the avant-garde of manual and intellectual workers." [30] But these internationalist reflections on the guiding ideas for the emancipation of workers did not give the group any desire to lead these struggles. The role "SouB" gave itself was to be attentive to the workers’ own inventiveness, "to provide them with the means to deploy the creativity that is at work in them and the means to become aware of that creativity so as to direct themselves." [31] If one wished to know what the proletariat was doing and what it wanted, one had to seek out the answer within the workers’ struggles, in their workshops. The purpose of the ideas was to encourage creations by the working class itself, through its experience of self-management and direct democracy. A term at the school of workers’ struggles was required. More exactly, to borrow an expression from Lyotard, "the inventive quality of the immediate practice" was "already emancipation." [32]

17It was a matter of regenerating the framework of the workers’ own guiding ideas, without outside intervention. This was the source of the group’s conflict with Jean-Paul Sartre, but also of their opposition to the classical concept of the "party." The articles on "SouB" in this issue will enable a look back at the all-encompassing alternative theory that Claude Lefort developed on the autonomy of the working class (self-education) in "Proletarian Experience." [33] We must also, of course, turn to the way in which Castoriadis, with "SouB," gradually elaborated his thinking on autonomy, which led him to the idea of the society’s self-institution. But the members of the group were divided on this as well. In particular, the stance of Souyri, "SouB"’s specialist on China, was marked by doubts concerning the emancipatory spontaneity of the masses and political spontaneism in general, for he felt that "the evil done by exploitation" went deep. As Lyotard wrote, "[t]o place confidence in the spontaneity of the masses was, in [Souyri’s] eyes, a bit like counting on the unconscious alone for emancipation from neurosis." [34] This is why Souyri thought that the imperative to listen to workers’ struggles needed to be complemented by the imperative to defend those struggles against the forces that threatened to distort them from within.

187. "SouB"’s proposition, then, was to shake up classical Marxism while maintaining a Marxist analytical framework. We may wonder, however, if their rejection of academic Marxism still relied upon Marxist principles or if, in fact, it often required detours beyond Marxism, thereby paving the way for the break some members made with the Marxist analysis of history and society. "SouB"’s work does not constitute a contiguous whole. While the group’s activity from its beginnings to 1958 seems to take place within a Marxist analytical framework, things are much less clear after 1958: there were already signs that some members were preparing to abandon Marxism.