Contenu du sommaire : L'anarchisme, cet autre socialisme

This article presents an overview of the renewal of anarchist studies in France and elsewhere. The authors highlight notably the following issues : the anthropological and political stakes of the new attention being paid to the forms and mutations of libertarian cultures ; the focus on certain, previously unknown, figures of the movement ; and, above all, the importance of the circulation of actors and ideas in the constitution of libertarian internationalism, whose importance in the history of the globalization of socialisms is now beginning to be grasped.

Based on the current state of international research, the article analyses the process leading to the building of an « anarcho-syndicalist » movement. Following the evolution and transformation of the name, from what was an initially pejorative appellation to a means for self-designation, the intention is to shows how, in the post-1917 context of a worldwide revolutionary thrust, and in reaction to the hegemonic will of Leninism, both within Russia, through the dictatorship, and also internationally, through the Communist International, the revolutionary trade unionist movement became polarized and then became fractured, with one pole converting to Marxism, while the other came to define the anti-authoritarian and federalist approach.

This article examines the early history of anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism in South Africa, a topic that has been almost entirely neglected in the existing literature. Opposed to national oppression and segregation, yet critical of black African and Coloured nationalism, the anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists developed an increasingly sophisticated analysis of national oppression. The deeply intertwined anarchist and revolutionary syndicalist traditions developed locally, evolving into a multi-racial and anti-capitalist movement, one that continued to influence regional labour movements, white and black, and the left in general, even after the formation of the Communist Party of South Africa in 1921.

This article examines the libertarian-inspired trade union movement during the Spanish War. It does so by examining the revolutionary experience in the Barcelona leather industry, in the course of which, while the CNT was indeed in a position of strength, a centralizing socialist dirigisme eventually came to prevail over the anarchist anti-authoritarian ideal. Rejecting any linear explanation, the author examines the multiple factors involved in this process, from military imperatives and the war economy, the industrialist cultural evolution of anarcho-syndicalism, and the after-effects of the strategic choices made in July and August 1936.

Because Louise Michel did not write a book summarizing her political thought, she is generally not considered as a theorist of anarchism. The article thus focuses on her lectures, taking them as spaces in which she formulated and promoted her political thinking and strategy. Based on the study of 703 identified speeches, the article explains the foundations of her commitment to the multiplication of public interventions. It shows how Louise Michel's constant desire to promote the unity of the different revolutionary tendencies was articulated with an anarchist political position, involving the rejection of partisan affiliation, a defence of direct action, a refusal of the vote as a method. This articulation highlights the nature of her revolutionary theory : a political conception in which the Commune is a mode of action and a perspective for social and political organization.

Looking at Gustav Landauer's Call to Socialism (1911), the article analyses some characteristics of the socialism of a libertarian who described himself as an « anarchist-socialist ». It thus examines its potential for the questioning of our present moment : a cultural socialism, associated with a cultural critique of capitalist modernity ; an anti-Marxist socialism, which denies the proletariat as such the role of revolutionary subject ; a community socialism, which re-evaluates the community forms inherited from the past, while advocating the creation of new communities where the future socialist society must begin, here and now.

This article deals with what is an apparently eccentric topic in Gustav Landauer's thought : his defence of the family. Contrary to the criticism inaugurated by Marx, who regarded it as an institution of bourgeois class domination, Landauer saw in the family the germ cell of the « sense of community » that is essential to anarchist socialism. The authors analyse Landauer's original appropriation of certain aspects of the Proudhonian conception of family, and also his opposition to Otto Gross on the issues of patriarchal repression and the liberation of women. Finally, the authors interrogate the topicality of this approach, which aims to make a distinction in social being between those elements that deserve to be preserved and those that must be transformed.

Ruth Kinna begins by identifying in the writings of Kropotkin and William Morris two contrasting figures of the « constructive tension » that has linked anarchist theories and socialism. Asked about the contemporary transformations of anarchism in Britain, she discusses the relationship between direct action and anti-parliamentarianism, suggesting that anarchists would seem to have lost out in the debate on the role of parliamentarism in the 20th century. She also reviews her work on utopian socialisms, hinting at the equivocal but irreplaceable resources of utopia.

Proposing here a new relational determination between social philosophy and its object, Martin Saar presents in this article, organised as a nexus of concepts, the theoretical framework through which to formulate a joint analysis of the various meanings of « the social », here differentiated in terms of different relations : of « order », « of practices », of « subjects ». These relations correspond to the three, relatively specific, forms of power, whose possibilities of alteration and transformation link the critical orientation of social philosophy to the project of an emancipatory politics.

This article deals with Althusser's concept of epistemological break, examining it in a genealogical perspective. Recently exhumed archives show that the young Michel Foucault, in the 1950s, had forged the idea of a « break » between Marx's early philosophical writings and his later political economy writings, doing so in order to criticize what he considered as the bourgeois readings of Marx, notably by Jean Hyppolite and Georges Gurvitch. It then becomes possible to rediscover an underground dialogue between Foucault and Althusser, and to reread For Marx from a changed perspective, emphasizing the ideological and political issues of the concept of « break », and not only its epistemological stakes.

This article proposes elements for the methodological examination of China's long-term economic growth. Using revised official statistical data, the authors of the article first construct a time series of physical capital stocks, going back to the date closest to the formation of the People's Republic (1949), extending the database up to the most recent statistical yearbooks, published in 2016. In this light, the article examines, in order to identify their problems and limitations, the framework offered by neoclassical models. It then goes on to examine the more original approach provided by Piketty's recent research, with a view to analyzing the contributions to growth of factors of production. Finally, the authors invite readers to move towards a clearly heterodox perspective, one using an indicator of profit rate for analysis of the issue of China's long-run economic growth.