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Title: The French Anarchist Movement Author: Giovanna Berneri Date: 1954 Language: en Topics: Anarchist Federation (France), France, George Fontenis, historical, organization, platform, platformism, synthesis anarchism Source: Retrieved on March 28, 2011 from http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/giovanna-berneri-the-french-anarchist-movement-1954/
When Georges Fontenis (1920–2010) died earlier this year, he was hailed
for his dedication to the revolutionary cause. During his lifetime he
was a controversial figure who played a divisive role in the French
anarchist movement, seeking to create a unified anarchist movement based
an adherence to a common platform, essentially a more traditional
leftist form of organization resembling a political party. Predictably,
his efforts met with much resistance from many anarchists and split
rather than united the French anarchist movement. Giovanna Berneri
(1897–1962), veteran anarchist activist, widow of Camillo Berneri and
mother of Marie Louise Berneri (Anarchism: A Documentary History of
Libertarian Ideas, Volume Two, Selections 4, 15 & 75), criticizes
Fontenis’ approach and reviews its results in this article from 1954, an
English translation of which was originally published in David Wieck’s
anarchist journal, Resistance (see Volume Two, Selections 38, 39 & 40).
In the French movement — or, to be exact, in the important segment
associated with the French Anarchist Federation — many of the young
people who played a very active part in the post-war period were
motivated chiefly by negative concerns: particularly, their
unwillingness to put up with the discipline the already existing parties
imposed. These young people didn’t see much worth in the deep unchanging
impulses which have been the heart of anarchism. Of the basic anarchist
ideas, they assimilated — and badly — only those which seemed somehow to
jibe with their passion to lead a political army. Living in a time when
authoritarian ideas were ascendant everywhere, they believed — and no
doubt many believed it sincerely — that the strength of the movement,
and the influence of its ideas on society, depended on it achieving
organizational and ideological unity. So they tried to organize the
French anarchists, except those who chose to remain in groups outside
the FAF, into a centralized structure in which the ideas of a single
person, or small group, could prevail. This organization had to be
provided also — naturally — with a disciplinary machinery able to ensure
the absolute fidelity of the members and the exclusion of
non-conformists. For anarchism, which demands room to breathe, the
broadest possible horizons, and the rejection of fixed structures, all
this was the ultimate absurdity.
One more example, really, of the typical Communist splinter-group:
Absolutely, they say, the proletariat must be led by a party, but this
party must be led by me — or us — as the vanguard Elite.
In this case the elite was very small. To make their will and plans
prevail, they took possession of the responsible jobs in the central
organization, and gradually transformed these into posts of command.
They gained absolute control of the editorial and business management of
the newspaper and internal bulletin — of the means, that is, for
“tending the souls” of the militants, of domesticating them, of giving
them predeformed information about events in the FAF, of pushing them
into that ideological unity around a new Catechism which was said to be
the only way to save the unity and cohesion of the organization. So
powerful did this intolerance and sectarianism become, that everybody
who disagreed with the tactics and ideology of Quai de Valmy had to go.
Those who tried to resist were expelled. All this, to repeat, is the
usual story of the political sect, of the Bordighist and Trotskyist
groups and the like. So that finally there was really nothing strange in
the decision to change the name of the FAF to the Libertarian Communist
Federation (FCL) and in the explicit repudiation of the word “anarchism”
in its official organ.
From the premise that Le Libertaire was aimed at a non-anarchist public,
they had deduced, logically and absurdly, that criticism and challenge
of its peculiar official viewpoint could not be printed in it. Writings
which contradicted the line of the little Ă©quipe were not published. The
paper became, therefore, more and more political and agitational.
Elementary anarchist ideas, such as the need for diversity of opinions
and activities, disappeared and were supplanted by propaganda campaigns
accompanied by vigorous drum-beating, based on rhetorical slogans, and
intended to make people stand up and yell and not to make them think.
Exactly the wrong way around. More and more openly, the paper has sought
to implant the idea that between the Communist Party’s ideology and
anarchist ideas there is more affinity than difference, and that
divergence in action has been due to human errors and not to differences
in theory. Thus the “parallel texts” — very carefully selected — from
Bakunin and Engels, etc.; culminating in the recent episode of Jean
Masson’s article on “the meaning of the Djilas affair.”
In analyzing Milovan Djilas’ expulsion from the Central Committee of the
Yugoslav CP, Masson developed the familiar Leninist thesis of the role
of the vanguard party, the revolutionary organization of the masses to
wield a dictatorship in the name of the victorious proletariat. One more
translation of Lenin into anarchist terms. In this case the protests
within the organization itself seem to have been unusually vigorous and
numerous, and the incident was closed with an impudent rectification.
This attempt to sell Communist goods among anarchists was so blatant
that it couldn’t be kept quiet. The CRIA (Commission for International
Anarchist Relations) felt obliged to invite the FCL delegate to state
his position on Masson’s article. Le Libertaire then tried to claim that
the theses on dictatorship and the party were Tito’s and not Masson’s:
which implied that the heavy thinkers at the Quai de Valmy take all the
readers of the paper to be perfect cretins, since one has only to read
the article to see that the explanation is utterly absurd.
Another recent incident is one more proof of the sectarian methods and
authoritarian purposes of the FCL leaders.
In October, 1953, [Georges] Fontenis, the little boss of the
organization, was invited by the Spanish groups in Paris to present his
views on anarchist organization to a meeting of comrades. One member of
the audience felt he had to express his disagreement with Fontenis: he
felt it a duty, in fact, because he was still a member of the FCL. He
said it wasn’t right to quote Berneri to justify these Marxist ideas
(it’s always the same dishonest game: to use Bakunin, Malatesta or
Berneri to put over something quite different), and that this kind of
distortion of ideas explained why authoritarianism and centralism
reigned within the anarchists’ organization.
These statements were enough to send Fontenis’ critic, together with
another comrade who spoke up at the same lecture, before the Commission
de Conflit (a kind of internal tribunal, or purge commission, of the
FCL), which decided for expulsion. Why? Because they had “publicly” —
that was not true, since the lecture was in the headquarters of the
Spanish organization — criticized the tactical-ideological “line”
adopted by the last Congress, a line that responsible members of the
organization were obliged to defend whether they agreed with it or not.
From 1950 forward, the bolshevization of the French anarchist
organization, by means of intolerance and sectarianism, has progressed
steadily and noticeably. Evidence of growing uneasiness in the groups
and regional federations has been increasingly present at the annual
congresses. The frankly dishonest methods used by the little Ă©quipe in
its political manoeuvres were becoming known to many militants, despite
the efforts to hide and disguise them. The militants began to see that
the shadowy doings at the Quai de Valmy were something other than
anarchism. Opposition began to develop, until many individuals and even
some groups, in Paris and in the provinces, took a stand.
But the thinner the ranks grew (Fontenis’ following now seems to be
around 250 persons), and the more the circulation of the paper declined
(probably 5,000 copies are now printed, many unsold [translator’s note:
at one time, Le Libertaire was printing 40,000 copies a week]), the more
verbally revolutionary has the tone of oratory and articles become. Even
if — for example — the “third front” campaign, carried on with great
furor, has left no trace except in the sensational Jacobin-style
headlines of Libertaire, in the newspaper files in libraries.
Fontenis’ elite guard has itself — it must be said — contributed
directly to clearing up the situation. As mentioned, the 1953 Congress
of the FAF gave up a word which no longer had any meaning for the
leaders of the organization: “anarchist.” The FAF designated itself the
FCL. Now we have an exact definition of what the little group around
Fontenis is. As there are “Catholic Communists,” or “internationalist
Communists,” so in France around Fontenis, holding as gospel the
Libertarian Communist Manifesto — a mishmash of a few pages in which all
problems and difficulties are disposed of out of hand — there are the
“libertarian communists.” Now there is no longer even a formal
contradiction between the Statutes of the organization, in which the
Leninist principles are re-affirmed, and the activities of the new
“leaders,” and the name they have given themselves.
About the work of the group installed in the Quai de Valmy there can no
longer be any doubt: they are not working for anarchism but for
communism, which means, against anarchism.
At this point the militants who had quit the FAF and had remained apart,
and those who had been criticizing the viewpoint and methods of action
of the little elite, realized that the only way to deal with the
increasingly bolshevik activities of the pseudo-anarchist organization
was to re-group themselves and develop their own activity.
On December 25, 26 and 27, 1953, a meeting of opponents of the FCL was
held at Paris, and reconstituted the FAF on the basis of clear and
honest declarations.
I am not so naive as to base many hopes on the verbal results of a
congress. Anyone who has been in the anarchist movement for years, and
has taken part in a few congresses, knows the tendency to be satisfied
with fine theoretical declarations and to formulate “plans of action”
for which means of realization don’t exist. But the FAF congress of last
December, even after minimizing it as much as possible, has meaning and
importance.
It is the first attempt on any scale (an Entente Anarchiste had been
created among opponents of the FAF at a meeting in Mans in 1952) by
militants of frankly differing tendencies to bring back to life the
anarchism which, if it is not to contradict itself at the start, must do
these things: have absolute faith in liberty, repudiate every expression
of the principle of authority within it, and be broad and accepting
toward ideas which, though not coming from anarchists, imply desires
akin to and a direction parallel to our own. These are the
characteristics which alone can set our movement apart from the
political jungle of our days, from the “left” parties and organizations
which are at the service of today’s or tomorrow’s rulers. This is the
only way to free ourselves from the aridity of political action, where
we are beforehand condemned to futility, so that we can move forward on
the multiple levels — not organizable from a Center — of social,
personal and local actions, on the job and with our neighbours, freely
and with liberating effects.
The French militants in opposition to the FCL have set to work in the
revived FAF. They hope to issue a new publication, and to renew and
carry on the spirit and work of Louise Michel, SĂ©bastien Faure and all
those who gave themselves to defend and clarify anarchist ideas. We know
this won’t be easy. In the nearly complete ruin of moral values which
authority has brought in our time, anarchism is the last ditch of a
radical defence of the remaining vitality, and the beginning of its
rebirth. They have to do pioneer work, starting almost from zero (and
this is true also for us Italians). Like all pioneer work, it requires
clarity and courage, tenacity and uprightness, devotion and sacrifice,
and no illusory hope of easy, great, early results.
As I have already mentioned, other groupings within the French movement,
but outside the FAF, are active. The existence outside the principal
organization of smaller groups, united by affinity of ideas, is
characteristic of all anarchist movements. In France there are the
groups which publish the papers Défense de l’homme, Contre courant,
L’Unique: the first primarily pacifist, the second more integrally
anarchist, the third an expression of a typically French individualist
tendency.
We must also mention certain groups in Paris and the provinces which
oppose the FCL, but are seeking to draw the conclusions of their
experience with the “central,” and tend to remain autonomous, that is to
belong to no organization but keep in close touch with all. In Paris a
noteworthy group is the Kronstadt Group, composed mostly of intelligent
young people animated by serious intentions, which may constitute a good
promise for the future.
GIOVANNA BERNERI
VolontĂ , May 1954